to put all those statutes in execution against the Protestants in those parts which are here enacted and as they falsely informed severally executed upon the Papists I would therefore see the most subtile State-monger in the world chalk out a way for his Majestie to mediate for Grace and favour for the Protestants by executing at this time the severity of the Lawes upon the Papists And that this favour should mount to a Toleration is a most dull and yet a most divelish misconstruction A Toleration looks forward to the time to come This favour backward onely to the offences past If any Papist now set at liberty shall offend the lawes again the Justices may nay must recommit him and leave favour and mercy to the King to whom onely it properly belongeth Nay let those 2. writs directed to the Judges be as diligently perused by those rash Censures as they were by those grave and learned to whom his Majestie referred the penning of the same and they shall find that these Papists are no other-otherwise out of prison then with their shackles about their heels sufficient sureties and good recognisances to present themselves again at the next assises As therefore that Lacedemonian posed the Oracle of Apollo by asking his opinion of the bird which he grasped in his hand whether he were alive or dead so it is a matter yet controversed and undecided whether those Papists closed up and grasped in the hands of the law be still in prison or at libertie Their own demeanours and the successe of his Majesties negotiations are Oracles that must deside the same If the Lay-papists do wax insolent with this mercy insulting upon the Protestants and translating this favour from the person to the cause I am verily of opinion his Majestie will reman d them to their former state and condition and renew his writ no more But if they shall use these graces modestly by admitting Conference with learned Preachers demeaning themselves neighbourly and peaceably praying for his Majestie and the prosperous successe of his pious endeavours and relieving him bountifully which they are as well able to do as any of his Subjects if he shall be forced and constrained to take his sword in hand then it cannot be denied but our Master is a Prince that hath as one said plus humanitatis penè quam hominis and will at that time leave to be merciful when he leaves to be himself In the mean while this argument fetcht from the Devils topicks which concludes a Concreto ad abstractum from a favour done to the English Papists that the King favoureth the Romish Religion is such a composition of follie and malice as is little deserved by that gracious Prince who by word writing exercise of Religion acts of Parliament late directions for catechizing and preaching and all professions and endeavours in the world hath demonstrated himself so resolved a Protestant God by his holy Spirit open the eyes of the people that these aierie representations of ungrounded fancies set aside they may clearly discern and see how by the goodnesse of God and the wisdom of their King this Island of all the Countries in Europe is the sole nest of peace and true Religion and the inhabitants thereof unhappie onely in this one thing that they never look up to heaven to give God thanks for so great a happinesse Lastly for mine own Letter to the Judges which did onely declare not operate the favour it was either much mis-penned or much misconstrued It recited four kinds of recusancies onely capable of his Majesties clemencie not so much to include these as to exclude many other crimes bearing amongst the Papists the name of Recusancies as using the function of a Romish Priest seducing the Kings liege people from the Religion established scandalizing and aspersing our King Church State or present Government All which offences being outward practises and no secret motions of the conscience are adjudged by the Lawes of England to be merely civil and political and excluded by my Letter from the benefit of those Writs which the bearer was imployed to deliver unto the Judges And thus I have given your Lordship a plain account of the carriage of this businesse and that the more suddenly that your Lordship might perceive it is not Aurea Fabula or prepared tale but a bare Narration which I have sent unto your Lordship I beseech your Lordship to let his Majestie know that the Letters to the Justices of Peace concerning those four heads recommended by his Majestie shall be sent away as fast as they can be exscribed I will trouble your Lordship no more at this time but shall rest ever Your Lordships servant and true friend Jo. Lincoln C. S. The Bishop of Menevensis to the Duke Dr. Laud. My most Gratious Lord I May not be absent and not write And since your Grace is pleased with the trouble I must professe my self much content with the performance of the dutie I am not unmindful of the last businesse your Grace committed to me but I have as yet done the lesse in it because I fell into a relaps of my infirmitie but I thank God I am once more free if I can look better to my self as I hope I shall My Lord I must become an humble suitor to your Grace I hear by good hand that my Lord of Canterbury intends shortly to renew the High Commission Now I am to acquaint your Grace that there is never a Bishop that lives about London left out of the Commission but my self and many that live quite absent are in and many inferiours to Bishops The Commission is a place of great experience for any man that is a Governour in the Church And since by his Majesties gratious goodnesse and your Grace's sole procurement I am made a Governour I would be loath to be excluded from that which might give me experience and so enable me to perform my dutie I am sure my Lord of Canterbury will leave me out as hitherto he hath done if his Majestie be not pleased to Command that I shall be in This I submit to your Grace but humbly desire even against my own ease and quiet that I may not be deprived of that experience which is necessary for my place I most humbly beseech your Grace to pardon this boldnesse and to know that in my daily prayers for your Grace's happinesse I shall ever rest Your Grace's most devoted and affectionate servant Guil. Menevensis Novemb. 18. 1624. The Bishop of Menevensis to the Duke Dr. Laud. My most Gracious Lord I Am heartily glad to hear your Lordship is so well returned and so happily as to meet so great joy God hath among many others his great blessings and I know your Grace so esteems them sent you now this extraordinarie one a son to inherit his fathers honours and the rest of Gods blessings upon both So soon as I came to any end of my journey I met the happie
Dunne in his Sermon that the goodnesse of God is not so much acknowledged by us in being our Creator as in being our Redeemer nor in that he hath chosen us as that nothing can take us out of his hands which in your Majesties remembrance let me challenge and hope for For the first accesses of favour they may be ascribed to ones own pleasing themselves but that appears to be for our sakes and for our good when the same forsakes not our civil deserts This redemption I crave not as to my own person but with your benefits once given nor do I assume them very deep for I have voluntarily departed from the hopes of pension place office I only cleave to that which is so little as that it will suffer no pairing or diminution And as in my former Letters so by this I humbly crave of your Majestie not to let the practises of Court work upon your Son the Prince not fearing your sufferance of my losse in that particular so much for I cannot lose it but willingly all with it as for to take off the Stage that which in the attempt may prove inconvenient And consider I pray your Majestie that my hope in desiring to passe these bad times was to be restored to my fortunes others are made unhappy by me if otherwise and then I lose my end I speak of impairing of changing or supplying as of any other way all such alterations and ruine are alike without I be worthy of your gift and that I can be worthy of all that Law can permit you to give or cast upon your Majestie by a more neerer title as it doth by this I shall account them equal evils that leave nothing or a patched and proportioned one changed or translated from one thing to another But if your Majestie have any respects to move you to suspend your good towards me let that which is mine rest in your own hands till that you find all opposite humours conformed to your purpose I have done wrong to my self thus to entertain such a doubt of your Majesty but the unrelenting of adversaries which when you will have them will sooner alter and that all this while I have received nothing of present notice for direction or to comfort me from your Majesty hath made me to expostulate with my self thus hardly For God is my judge Sir I can never be worthy to be if I have these markes put upon me of a Traytor as that tumbling and disordering of that estate would declare the divorce from your presence laies too much upon me and this would upon both I will say no farther neither in that which your Majesty doubted my aptnesse to fall into for my Cause nor my Confidence is not in that distresse as for to use that mean of intercession nor of any thing besides but to remember your Majestie that I am the Workmanship of your hands and bear your stamp deeply imprinted in all the characters of favour that I was the first plant ingrafted by your Majesties hand in this place therefore not to be unrooted by the same hand lest it should taint all the same kind with the touch of that fatalnesse And that I was even the Son of a Father whose services are registred in the first honours and impressions I took of your Majesties favour and laid there as a foundation stone of that building These and your Majesties goodnesse for to receive them is that I rely upon So praying for your Majesties prosperity I am in all humblenesse Your Majesties loyal servant and Creature R. Sommersett The Lo. Chancelour Bacon to the Lords If it may please your Lordships I shall humbly crave at your Lordships hands a benigne interpretation of that which I shall now write for words that come from wasted spirits and an oppressed mind are more safe in being deposited in a noble Construction then in being Circled with any reserved Caution Having made this as a protection to all which I shall say I will go on but with a very strange entrance as may seem to your Lordships at the first for in the midst of a state of as great affliction as I think a mortal man can endure honour being above life I shall begin with the professing gladnesse in some things The first is that hereafter the greatnesse of a Judge or Magistrates shall be no Sanctuary or protection to him against guiltinesse which in few words is the beginning of a golden world The next that after this example it is like that Judges will flie from any thing in the likenesse of Corruption though it were at a great distance as from a Serpent which tendeth to the purging of the Courts of Justice and reducing them to their true honour and splendour And in these two points God is my witnesse though it be my fortune to be the anvile upon which these good effects are beaten and wrought I take no small comfort But to passe from the motions of my heart whereof God is onely Judge to the merits of my Cause whereof your Lordships are onely Judges under God and his Lievtenant I do understand there hath been expected from me heretofore some justification and therefore I have chosen one onely justification instead of all others out of the justification of Job for after the clear submission and Confession which I shall now make unto your Lordships I hope I may say and justifie with Job in these words I have not hid my sin as did Adam nor concealed my faults in my bosome This is the only justification I will use It resteth therefore that without fig-leaves I do ingenuously confesse and acknowledge that having understood the particulars of the charge not formally from the house but enough to inform my Conscience and memory I find matter both sufficient and full to move me to desert the defence and to move your Lordships to condemn and censure me Neither will I trouble your Lordships by singling out particulars which I think may fall off Quid te exempta juvat spinis de millibus una Neither will I prompt your Lordships to observe upon the proofes where they come not home or the scruples touching the Credit of the Witnesses Neither will I present unto your Lordships how far a defence might in divers things extenuate the offence in respect of the time or manner of the gift or the like circumstances but onely leave these things to spring out of your own noble thoughts and observations of the evidence and examinations themselves and charitably to wind about the particulars of the charge here and there as God shall put in your minds and so submit my self wholly to your piety and grace And now that I have spoken to your Lordships as Judges I shall say a few words unto you as Peers and Prelates humbly commending my Cause to your noble Minds and magnanimous affections Your Lordships are not onely Judges but Parliamentary Judges you have a farther extent of arbitrary
wholly upon Spain so that this King will protect him in his Electoral dignity and what he hath lately possessed himself of in those parts This offer of the Dukes hath been several dayes debated in Councel where the Marquesse Ynoiosa hath been busie in the behalf of the Duke but the wiser part of this Councel seeing how prejudicial the increase of the Dukes greatnesse may prove to the Empire do no way favour his pretentions They likewise hold fit to continue the state of things in a possibility of an accommodation without our Master The Arch-Duke Don Carlos hath brought power from the Emperour to proceed to the consummation of a marriage betwixt the Emperours son and the Infanta Donna Maria wherein he sayes he hath nothing to Capitulate but brings them a blanck paper and hath power and order to confirm what conditions they shall here set down The Emperour's Embassadour doth much presse to proceed to the Capitulations but there is yet nothing done The Infanta of Brussels hath lately written hither importing this King to admit of a treaty of marriage betwixt the Prince of Polonia and the Infanta his Sister extolling with many expressions the worth and parts of that Prince There hath been some moneths a general stop of their proceedings here in all suites of English Merchants depending in this Court but I have at last procured a Junto to be assigned for the hearing of all English Causes wherein I am promised there shall be a speedy Resolution taken of whatsoever is at present in Question The Duke of Feria hath lately advertised hither from Millain that the French King and the Duke of Savoy do minister much occasion of jealousie that they intend to attempt some novelty in those parts and doth therefore desire that his Troops may be augmented whereupon above the ordinary charge there was instantly remitted unto him 2000. Duckets The great annual Assiento which this King makes with the Genoueses is newly concluded it is for 7. millions whereof 4. are remitted for Flanders to be paid by monethly portions In a late meeting of the Councel of State upon a discourse that passed amongst them taking into consideration this Kings wants and the present distemper of his affairs the Inquisidor General expressing how necessary a time it was for his Majesties Subjects to assist his present occasions made offer of 100 Duckets for his part which the Conde of Olivares followed with a tender of 300 the Conde of Monterrey of 100 all the rest of the Councel of State following their example gave according to their quality Notice being taken of this abroad the Condestable wrote a Letter unto this King wherein he made tender of 200 Duckets the Marquesse of Castel Rodrigo of 100 the Marquesse of Carpio of the like summe Divers others have likewise declared themselves in this donative and it is hoped that it will go over the whole Kingdome and bring in an extraordinary Treasure into the Kings purse Thus with the remembrance of my duty I rest Your Graces c. W A. Archbishop Abbots to Secretarie Nanton 12. Septemb. 1619. Good Mr. Secretarie I Have never more desired to be present at any Consultation then that which is this day to be handled for my heart and all my heart goeth with it But my Foot is worse then it was on Friday so that by advice of my Physitian I have sweat this whole night past and am directed to keep my bed this day But for the matter my humble advice is That there is no going back but a countenancing of it against all the world yea so far as with ringing of Bells and making of Bon-fires in London so soon as it shall be certainly understood that the Coronation is past I am satisfied in my Conscience that the Cause is just wherefore they have rejected that proud and bloody man and so much the rather because he hath taken a course to make that Kingdom not elective but to take it from the donation of another man And when God hath set up the Prince that is chosen to be a mark of honor through all Christendom to propagate his Gospel and to protect the oppressed I dare not for my part give advice but to follow where God leads It is a great honour to the King our Master that he hath such a Son whose virtues have made him thought sit to be made a King And me thinks I do in this and that of Hungary foresee the work of God that by piece and piece the Kings of the earth that gave their power unto the beast all the Word of God must be fulfilled shall now tear the Whore and make her desolate as St. John in his Revelation hath foretold I pray you therefore with all the spirits you have to put life into this businesse and let a return be made into Germany with speed and with comfort and let it really be prosecuted that it may appear to the World that we are awake when God in this sort calleth us If I had time to expresse it I could be very angry at the shuffling which was used toward my Lord of Doncaster and the slighting of his Embassage so which cannot but touch upon our Great Master who did send him and therefore I would never have a Noble Sonne forsaken for respect of them who truly aym at nothing but their own purposes Our striking in will comfort the Bohemians will honour the Palsgrave will strengthen the Union will bring on the States of the Low Countries will stirre up the King of Denmark and will move his two uncles the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Bovillon to-together with Tremoville a rich Prince in France to cast in their shares And Hungarie as I hope being in that same cause will run the same fortune for the meanes to support the war I hope Providebit Deus The Parliament is the old and honourable way but how assured at this time I know not yet I will hope the best certainly if countenance be given to the action many brave spirits will voluntarily go Our great Master in sufficient want of mony gave some ayde to the Duke Savoy and furnished out a prettie army in the cause of Cleve We must trie once again what we can be done in this businesse of a higher nature and all the mony that may be spared is to be turned that way And perhaps God provided the Jewels that were layd up in the Tower to be gathered by the Mother for the preservation of her Daughter who like a noble Princesse hath professed to her Husband not to leave her self one Jewel rather then not to maintain so religious and righteous a cause You see that lying on my bed I have gone too far but if I were with you this should be my language which I pray you humbly and heartily to represent to the King my Master telling him that when I can stand I hope to do his Majestie some service herein So commending me unto you I
differ from him for I see the justest Triumphs that the Romans in their greatest greatness did obtain and that whereof the Emperours in their stiles took additions and denominations were of such an enemy that is people barbarous and not reduced to civility magnifying a kind of lawless liberty prodigall of life hardned in body fortified in woods and bogs placing both justice and felicity in the sharpness of their swords Such were the Germans and antient Britains and divers others Upon which kind of people whether the victory be a Conquest or a Reconquest upon a rebellion or revolt it made no difference that ever I could find in honour And therefore it is not the inriching predatory war that hath the preheminence in honour else should it be more honour to bring in a Carrock of rich burthen then one of the twelve Spanish Apostles But then this nature of people doth yield a higher point of honour considering in truth and substance then any war can yield which should be atchieved against a civil enemy if the end may be Pacique imponere morem To replant and refound the policie of that Nation to which nothing is wanting but a just and civil Government Which design as it doth descend to you from your noble Father who lost his life in that action though he paid tribute to nature and not to fortune so I hope your Lordship shall be as fatal a Captain to this war as Africanus was to the war of Carthage after that both his Uncle and his Father had lost their lives in Spain in the same war Now although it be true that these things which I have writ being but representations unto your Lordship of the honour and apparance of success of the enterprise be not much to the purpose of my direction yet it is that which is best to me being no man of war and ignorant in the particulars of Estate for a man may by the eye set up the white right in the midst of the But though he be no Archer Therefore I will only add this wish according to the English phrase which termeth a wel-willing advice a wish That your Lordship in this whole action looking forward set down this Position That merit is worthier then same and looking back hither would remember this text That obedience is better then sacrifice For designing to fame and glory may make your Lordship in the adventure of your person to be valiant as a private Souldier rather then as a Generall it may make you in your commandments rather to be gracious then disciplinary it may make you press action in the respect of the great expectation conceived rather hastily then seasonably and safely it may make you seek rather to atchieve the war by force then by intermixture of practice it may make you if God shall send you prosperous beginnings rather seek the fruition of that honour then the perfection of the work in hand And for your proceeding like a good Protestant upon warrant and not upon good intention your Lordship knoweth in your wisdom that as it is most fit for you to desire convenient liberty of instruction so it is no less fit for you to observe the due limits of them remembring that the exceeding of them may not only procure in case of adverse accident a dangerous disadvow but also in case of prosperous success be subject to interpretation as if all were not referred to the right end Thus I have presumed to write these few lines to your Lordship in methodo ignorantiae which is when a man speaketh of any subject not according to the parts of the matter but according to the model of his own knowledge And most humbly desire your Lordship that the weakness thereof may be supplied in your Lordship by a benign acceptation as it is in me by my best wishing FR. BACON Another to him after his enlargement My Lord NO man can expound my doings more then your Lordship which makes me need to say the less only I humbly pray you to believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation of Bonus Civis and Bonus Vir and that I love some things better I confess then I love your Lordship yet I love few persons better both for gratitudes sake and for vertues which cannot hurt but by accident Of which my good affection it may please your Lordship to assure your self of all the true effects and offices that I can yield for as I was ever sorry your Lordship should flie with many wings doubting Icarus fortune so for the growing up of your own feathers be they Ostridges or other kind no man shall be more glad and this is the Axel-tree whereupon I have turned and shall turn Which having already signified unto you by some neer means having so fit a Messenger for mine own Letter I thought good to redouble also by writing And so I commend you to Gods protection From Grayes Inne c. FR. BACON Sir Francis Bacon to Sir Robert Cecil after defeat of the Spaniards in Ireland It may please your Honour AS one that wisheth you all increase of Honour and as one that cannot leave to love the State what interest soever I have or may come to have in it and as one that now this dead Vacation time have some leisure ad aliud agend I will presume to propound unto you that which though you cannot but see yet I know not whether you apprehend and esteem it in so high a degree that is for the best action of importation to your self of sound honour and merit of her Majesty and this Crown without ventosity or popularity that the riches of any occasion or the tide of any opportunity can possibly minister or offer And that is the Causes of Ireland if they be taken by the right handle For if the wound be not ripped up again and come to a festered sense by new foreign succours I think that no Physitian will go on much with letting blood in declinatione morbi but will intend to purge and corroborate To which purpose I send you mine opinion without labour of words in the inclosed and sure I am that if you shall enter into the matter according to the vivacity of your own spirit nothing can make unto you a more gainfull return For you shall make the Queens felicity compleat which now as it is incomparable and for your self you shall make your self as good a Patriot as you are thought Politique and to have no less generous ends then dexterous delivery of your self towards your ends and as well to have true arts and grounds of government as the facility and felicity of practice and negotiation and to be as well seen in the periods and tides of estates as in your own circle and way then the which I suppose nothing can be a better addition and accumulation of honour unto you This I hope I may in privateness write either as a Kinsman that may be bolder or as a
have no other Father then your Highnesse and are branches of your Princely house Unto your Highnesse was in all respects due from me the accompt which I have given you of my vocation I beseech you to accept it and to believe that I will alwaies be answerable to my dutie and will pray for the spirituall and temporal increase of your Highnesse whose hands I reverently kisse Your Highness most humble and most obliged servant Alfons d' Este From Salsuolo the 30th of July 1629. Sir Kenhelm Digby to Sir Edward Stradling To my Honourable Friend Sir Edward Esterling aliàs Stradling aboard his ship MY much honoured freind I am too well acquainted with the weaknesse of my abilities that are farre unfit to undergoe such a task as I have in hand to flatter my selfe with the hope that I may either informe your understanding or do my selfe honour by what I am to write But I am so desirous that you should be possessed with the true knowledge of what a bent will I have upon all occasions to doe you service that obedience to your Command weigheth much more with me then the lawfulnesse of my excuse can to preserve me from giving you in writing such a testimony of my ignorance and erring fantasie as I fear this will prove Therefore without any more circumstances I wil as near as I can deliver to you in this paper what the other day I discoursed to you upon the 22d Staffe of the ninth Canto in the second book of that matchlesse Poem The Fairy Queen written by our English Virgil whose words are these The Frame thereof seem'd partly Circuler And part Trianguler O work Divine These two the first and last proportions are Th' one imperfect mortal faeminine Th' other immortal perfect masculine And twixt them both a quadrat was the base Proportion'd equally by seven and nine Nine was the Circle set in heavens place All which compacted made a goodly Diapase In this Staff the Author seemeth to me to proceed in a differing manner from what he doth elsewhere generally through his whole booke for in other places although the beginning of this Allegorie or mistical sense may be obscure yet in the processe of it he doth himselfe declare his owne conceptions in such sort that they are obvious to any ordinary capacity But in this he seemeth only to glance at the profoundest notions that any science can deliver to us and then of a suddaine as it were recalling himself out of an Enthusiasme he returneth to the gentle relation of the Allegorical history that he had begun leaving his readers to wander up and down in much obscurity and to rove with much danger of erring at his intention in these lines which I conceive to be dictated by such a learned spirit and so generally a knowing soule that were there nothing else extant of Spencers writings yet these few words would make me esteeme him no whit inferiour to the most famous men that ever have been in any age as giving an evident testimony herein that he was throughly versed in the Mathemeticall sciences in Philosophy and Divinity unto all which this might serve for an ample Theame to make large Commentaries upon In my praises upon this subject I am confident that the worth of the Author will preserve me from this censure that my ignorance only begetteth this admiration since he hath written nothing that is not admirable But that it may appeare I am guided somewhat by my owne Judgement although it be a very meane one and not by implicit faith and that I may in the best manner I can comply with what you may expect from me I will not longer hold you in suspence but begin immediately though abruptly with the declaration of what I conceive to be the true sense of this place which I shall not goe about to adorne with any plausible discourses or with authorities and examples drawne from others writings since my want both of conveniency and learning would make me fall very short herein but it shall bee enough for me to intimate my conceptions and to offer them up unto you in their own simple and naked forme leaving to your better Judgment the examination of the waight of them and after perusal of them beseeching you to reduce me if you perceive me to erre It is evident that the Authors intention in this Canto is to describe the body of man informed with a rational soule and in prosecution of that designe he setteth down particularly the several parts of the one and the faculties of the other But in this Stanza he comprehendeth the general description of them both as being joyned together to frame a compleat man they make one perfect compound which will appear better by taking a survey of every several Clause thereof by it selfe The frame thereof seem'd partly circuler And part trianguler By these figures I conceive that he meaneth the Mind and the Body of man the first being by him compared to a Circle and the latter to a Triangle for as the Circle of all figures is the most perfect and includeth the greatest space and is every way full and without angles made by the continuation of one onely line so mans soul is the noblest and most beautiful creature that God hath created and by it we are capable of the greatest gifts which God can bestow which are Grace Glory and Hypostatical union of the humane Nature to the divine and she enjoyeth perfect freedom and liberty in all other actions and is made without composition which no figures are that have angles for they are caused by the coincidence of several lines but of one pure substance which was by God breathed into a body made of such compounded earth as in the preceding Stanza the Author describeth and this is the exact image of him that breathed it representing him as fully as it is possible for any creature which is infinitely distant from the Creator For as God hath neither beginning nor ending so neither of these can be found in a Circle although that being made of the successive motion of a line it must be supposed to have a beginning somewhere God is compared to a circle whose center is every where but whose Circumference no where but mans soul is a circle whose circumference is limited by the true center of it which is only God For as a circumference doth in all parts alike respect that indivisible point and as all lines drawn from the inner side of it do make right angles with it when they meet therein so all the interior actions of mans soul ought to have no other respective point to direct themselves unto but God and as long as they make right angles which is that they keep the exact middle of vertue and decline not to either of the sides where the contrary vices dwell they cannot fail but meet in their Center By the Trianguler figure he very aptly designeth the Body For as the