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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
state_n	lord_n	sir_n	treasurer_n	1,173	5	11.1655	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59027	The secret history of the reigns of K. Charles II and K. James II	Phillips, John, 1631-1706.	1690 (1690)	Wing S2347; ESTC R9835	90,619	226

subvert their Laws and Liberties to undermine and impoverish their Estates and Fortunes and to reduce a Plump Wealthy and Well-nourish'd Nation into a Skeleton of a Kingdom what could be more infernally ingrateful Yet that this was the Study and Practice of his whole Reign the following Passages will make Geometrically demonstrable The King was not ignorant that he was furnish'd already with a stock of Gentlemen who being forc'd to share the Misfortunes of his Exile and consequently no less imbitter'd against those whom they lookt upon as their Oppressors he had moulded them to his own Popish Religion and Interests by corrupting them in their Banishment with him to renounce the Protestant Doctrine and Worship and secretly reconcile themselves to the Church of Rome Insomuch that Mr. R. offer'd to prove one day in the Pensionary House of Commons that of all the Persons yet Persons all of Rank and Quality who sojourn'd with the King abroad there were but three then alive viz. P. Rupert the Lord M. and Mr. H. Coventry who had not been prevail'd upon by his Majesty to go to Mass. Nor could their being restor'd to their Estates at his return separate them from their Masters Interests for that besides the future Expectations with which the King continually fed them and the Obligations that the Principles of the Religion to which they had revolted layd them under they had bound themselves by all the Oaths and Promises that could be exacted from them to assist and cooperate with him in all his Designs for the Extirpation of the Protestant Religion and introducing of Popery though they were dispenced with from appearing bare-fac'd So soon therefore as the Parliament that gave him admittance into the Kingdom was Dissolv'd the King call'd another the first of his own Calling and so ordered the Matter that the greatest part of the Mask'd Revolters got in amongst the Real Protestants By which means all things went trim and trixy on the King's side They restor'd him the Militia which the Long Parliament had wrested out of his Fathers hands they sacrific'd the Treasure of the Nation to his Profuseness and Prodigality the only Vertue in him that sav'd us from utter Ruin for had he been more sparing he had done us more mischief They offer'd up the Rights and Liberties of the People by advancing his Prerogative and what was most conducing to the King 's Popish Designs they made him by private Instructions those Penal Statutes which divided the two prevailing Protestant Parties and set them together by the Ears by arming one Party of the Protestants against all the rest such a darling advantage to the Papists and upon the obtaining of which he set so high a value that neither the necessity of his Affairs at any time afterwards nor the Application and Interposure of several Parliaments for removing the grounds of our Differences and Animosities by an Indulgence to be past into a Law could prevail upon him to forego the advantages he had got of keeping the Protestants at mutual Enmity one with another and making them useful to their own Designs of supplanting the Protestant Religion and re-establishing the Idolatry of Rome Nor was this all but that he might carry on his Popish Designs the more safely and covertly under the cursed Mask of Hypocrisie he procur'd the passing of an Act in his Pensionary Parliament 1662. whereby it was made forfeiture of Estate and Imprisonment for any to say the King was a Papist or an Introducer of Popery Nevertheless notwithstanding he was thus become a Protestant by the Law of the Land to repeat how he exerted the Power given him by the P2rliament how he persecuted and prosecuted the Protestant Nonconformists from one end of the Kingdom to the other how he caus'd them to be Excommunicated imprison'd and harrass'd when nto a Papist in the Three Kingdoms was so much as troubled or molested is a thing that would be altogether needless as being so well known to the World and still too sadly remembred by Thousands of Families that to this day too deeply wear the Scars of his Cruel Dilaniations However it shew'd sufficiently the aim of our dear Defender of the Protestant Faith which was to weaken and enervate the Protestant Party that so they might be come the more easie Prey to Popish Rage and Cruelty when the blessed Hour should arrive for the putting in Execution those bloody designs with which he had been so long travailing which because he could not carry on without assistance therefore although he were sometimes oblig'd by the necessity of his Affairs and in complyance with the Times to palliate his Contrivances to make use of sincere and real Protestants yet they who were admitted into his secrets and in whom he placed his chiefest Trust and Confidence were always Papists He who would needs have himself enacted the best Protestant in his Dominions took no notice that whosoever was reconciled to Rome stood debarr'd from all Offices and obnoxious to several kinds of punishment but still out of the number of Papists or else such as were of no Religion at all which was the same thing for his purposes chose his Embassadors Generals Ministers of State and many of his greatest Bishops too What else recommended Sir W. Godolphin to be Embassador in Spain or Sir Lionel I. to be his Plenipotentiary at Nimeguen and afterwards his drudging Sham-plot Secretary It was his being a zealous Roman Catholick that preferr'd the Lord Clifford to the Treasurers Staff with several others of the same stamp to other high Preferments more Eminent for their Dignities than for their Parts and lastly what was it but this Indulgence and finding ways to dismiss the Papists without any harm or damage when Indicted or Presented at the Sessions that advanced so many Beneplacito Judges and continued them in their Places I had almost forgot another very great kindness which the same Parliament did him which was at the Private Instance of the King to abrogate the Triennial Act by which the sitting of Parliaments once in three years was infallibly secur'd to the Kingdom So well did his Majesty know where the Shoe pinch'd him and so crafty was he to take his Advantage from the Delirium and Frenzy the Nation was in upon his Restoration to obtain the repealing of the Principal Laws by which his wriggling into Arbitrary Government would have been curb'd and restrain'd But whether it were that the Prodigal Zeal of those Members began to cool conscious perhaps that they had already open'd too large a Gap to Tyrannous Invasion upon the Liberties of the People which they had so treacherously laid at the Kings Mercy or whether it were that the King resolv'd to quicken his pace to Arbitrary Rule to the end he might see Popery flourish in his own Days certain it is that his next Attempt was to make the Parliaments themselves the Ministers and Instruments of his own Popish Ambition and our Slavery In order

Emperor was put off with a Flamm Nay so soon as the Two Confederate Monarchs had thus made a shift to cut the Gordian Knot the now pitiful but formerly vaunted Tripple League was trampled under foot turn'd into Ridicule and less valued than a Ballad Insomuch that to talk of admitting others into the Tripple League was reprehended in print as a kind of Figure of Speech commonly called a Bull. And farther to shew how much he hated the thoughts of the Triple League which he had made for the good of Christendom his most Sacred Majesty suffered an Agent of his one Marsilly whom he had sent to invite the Switzers into the Garranty who was Surprized and taken Prisoner by the French in the execution of the Commands he had not many Months before received from Whitehall to be broken upon the Wheel at Paris tho one single Word from the King would have sav'd his Life Neither did he take it ill that upon the Scaffold Twenty Questions were put to him relating to his own Person or that in such a publick and infamous Place a strict inquiry should be made as to what had pass'd between him and the King of England for that was the best Title they could afford him for all his late Favours And thus it is plain that the Tripple League was broken for no other ends than to be subservient to the ends of the French King to ruin the Dutch and to bring the Three Kindoms of England Ireland and Scotland under the Yoaks of Arbitrary Power and Roman Catholick Idolatry after a total Abolition of the name of Parliaments and subversion of the Fundamental Laws Gratias tibi piissime atque invictissime Rex Carole Secunde And tha● he might not as much as in him lay meet with after-rubs Mr. H. C. dispatch'd into Sweden to dissolve the Tripple League in that Kingdom which he did so effectually by co-operating with the French Ministers in that Court that the Swede after it came to Rupture never assisted to any purpose or prosecuted the Ends of the said Alliance only by arming himself at the expence of the League first under a disguised Mediation acted the French Interest and at last threw off his Vizard and drew his Sword on the French side in the Quarrel And at home when the Project ripen'd and grew hopeful the Lord Keeper was discharged from his Office and both he the D. of Ormond Prince Rupert and Secretary Trevor were discarded out of the Committee for Forreign Affairs as being too honest to comply with the Intreagues then on foot Mr. Trevor being the first Secretary of State that was ever left out of a Commission of that Importance All things being so well thus far disposed toward a War with Holland there wanted only a Quarrel and to pick one required much invention The East-India Company was summon'd to know whether they had any thing to object against them but the Dutch had so punctually complyed with all the Conditions of the Peace at Breda that nothing could there be found out And as to the Tripple League they were out at the same time in pursuance of it and to be ready upon occasion to relieve the the Spanish Netherlands which were then threatned by the French But at length a way was found out that never hapned because it was never so much as imagin'd before by sending the Fanfan a sorry inconsiderable Yatcht but bearing the English Flag with Orders to sail into the middle of the Dutch Fleet single out the Admiral and to fire two Guns at him a thing as ridiculous as for a Lark to dare a Hobby However the Commander in Chief in respect to his Majesties Colours and in consideration of the Amity between both Nations paid the Admiral of the Yatcht a Visit to know the reason of his Anger and understanding it was because the whole Fleet had fail'd to strike to his Oyster-boat the Dutch Commander excus'd it as a thing that never hapned before and therefore could have no Instructions in it and so they parted But the Captain of the Yatcht having thus acquitted himself return'd full freighted with the Quarrel he was sent for Which yet for several Months was pass'd over here in silence but to be afterwards improv'd as the design ripen'd For there was yet one jolly prank more to be plaid at home to make the King more capable of what was shortly after to be executed upon his Neighbours The Exchequer for some years before by the Bait of more than ordinary Gain had decoy'd in the greatest part of the most wealthy Goldsmiths and they the rest of the Money'd People of the Nation by the due payment of Interest till the King was run in Debt upon what account no body knew above Two Millions Which served for one of the Pretences in the Lord Keeper's Speech at the Opening of the Parliament to demand and obtain a Grant of the forementioned Supplies and might plentifully have suffic'd to disengage the King with Peace and any tolerable Good Husbandry But as if it had been perfidious to have apply'd them to any of the Purposes declar'd instead of Payment it was privately resolv'd to shut up the Exchequer lest any part of the Money should have been legally expended but that all might be appropriated to the Holy War in prospect and those far more pious Uses to which the King had dedicated it This Affair was carried on with all the secresie imaginable lest the unseasonable venting of it should have spoil'd the Wit and Malice of the Design So that all on a sudden upon the First of Ianuary 1671. to the great astonishment ruine and despair of so many interested Persons and to the Terror of the whole Nation by so Arbitrary a Fact the Proclamation issu'd forth in the midst of the Confluence of such vast Aids and so great a Revenue whereby the Crown publish'd it self Bankrupt made Prize of the Subject and broke all Faith and Contract at home in order to the breaking of both abroad with more advantage What was this but a Robbery committed upon the People under the Bond and Security of the Royal Faith by which many hundreds were as really impoverish'd and undone as if he had violently broken into their Houses and taken their Money out of their Coffers Nay that would have look'd Generous and Great whereas the other was base and sneaking Only it seem'd more agreeable to his Majesties Temper to rob his Subjects by a Trick than to plunder them by direct and open Force Of alliance to this only with some more G●ains if more could be of Vileness and Unworthiness in it was that Action also of seizing part of the Money collected for the Redemption of Slaves out of Argiers and fetching it from the Chamber of London where it lay deposited to that end into the Treasury from whence it was to be dispos'd and made use of for the Enslaving the Nation Could there be an Action of greater barbarity