that necessity I never took you so much behind hand in Sense and Reason but that you might plainly see that this is but a bantre of these Rogues for they neither stated the necessity and the urgent occasions you had to forswear your self and never inquired whether any necessity or any urgent occasions could excuse you from lying under the guilt of Perjury Then they came off with an impudent lye and say the King is sole Judge of that necessity He is sole Judge of nothing but what he is intitled to by the Law where the Law makes him a sole Judge there I do and own my self bound to obey him as such But once more Sir Where was this necessity of which you were to be sole Judge When did it spring Out of what part of the World I believe if you could have convinced the Nation of this necessity and these urgent occasions they would not so readily concurred to your going to St. Germains were your Popish Friends oppressed And did the necessity arise from thence If it did Why did you not tell the Parliament of this Oppression Were they in want of Places at Court and Imployments under you which they could not hold Truly a great many Protestants went without them notwithstanding their being qualified Oh! but the Priests of the Church of Rome were in danger of the Law I never could yet see that day If they would be quiet and the Religion of the Church of Rome was your Religion Well if it was Had you not better to have refused the Crown rather than to have taken it with such Incumbrances and Clogs as should expose you to such necessities and urgent occasions of Perjuring your self and Damning your Soul and Ruining of three Kingdoms It was well you were the sole Judge of the necessity for if an honest English Parliament had sat in the time of your necessity and urgent occasions they would have made these Rogues have swung for their villainous Advice 5. That this is not in Trust given to the King but the Antient Remains of the Crown which never was nor can be taken from him you nor no King in England ever had any thing but what you received in Trust from the People of England in Parliament assembled therefore this was the greatest of Impudence that these Twelve ignorant Devils could be guilty of for what Authority Power or Riches have the Kings of England but what they received from the People and it is plain the Power and Authority that you received was for the benefit of the People and not for the ruin and destruction of the Laws you consented to you were intrusted with the Conservation of them not to Suspend or Dispense with them at your will and pleasure But what King of England was there since the pretended Conqest that was not Sworn to keep the Laws and defend the Rights and Liberties of the Church and People of England and who Administred this Oath to them but one or more in the behalf of themselves and all the People of England Your Brother though bad enough took the Government as a trust reposed in him by his good People of England what part was it then that was not a Trust they trusted him with vast sums of money they trusted you but with a very little I pray Sir would your Scoundril Conspirators but tell me what parts were the Remains of the Crown and how they came so to be if they cannot it is all Cheat and Nonsence By your management notwithstanding all that might have been said to the contrary even in your Reign without the danger of being hanged you obtained from your Judges this wicked Opinion I suppose you were not Idle but was resolved to proceed according to this Judgment of theirs for you presently invaded the Liberties both of Church and State I have given you some instances of your Invasion upon the Rights of the People of England in relation to Matters of the Church Now let us proceed to see how you carried your self in reference to the Civil Rights and Liberties of the People of England which brings me to a second Instance of your invading our Civil Rights 2. As your Brother did begin and made a very great Progress in so you went on to invade Priviledges and to seize the Charters of the Towns that had a right to be represented in Parliament and by your Tools procured Surrenders of them to be made to you especially where they were poor and not able to defend them And a Gentleman that valued himself upon his Oath that he had made to a Corporation whereof he was a Magistrate and therefore refused to deliver the same you rewarded him with a two or three years imprisonment and had not God interposed it had been to the ruin of himself his Wife and Children By these Surrenders Sir you caused all the Magistrates to give up their Rights and Priviledges to be disposed of at your pleasure and the pleasure of your Villains the Conspirators and by this means you placed in several of these Towns Popish Magistrates notwithstanding their incapacity or such as were Popishly affected and willing to concur with you in all your evil Designs and Purposes assuring your self that when necessity or your urgent Occasions should force you to call a Parliament you might have such a Parliament returned as should at once set up Popery and Arbitrary Power Nay Sir our danger in your time and in the time of your loving and kind Brother did most and doth still arise from those Beggarly and Paltry Borroughs that either are by Charter or Prescription enabled to send Members to Parliament 3. That you might not fail in the Counties of obtaining your wicked ends you gave Orders to Examin all Lords Lieutenants Deputy Lieutenants Sheriffs Justices of the Peace and all other that were in any Publick Employments if they would Concur with you in the Repealing the Test and Penal Laws and those whose Consciences would not permit them to comply with your wicked Designs and Purposes were turned out and others who you found would be more compliant to you in your intentions in defeating the End and Execution of those Laws which had been made with so much Care and Caution to preserve not only the Protestant Religion but also our Civil Rights and Liberties and into many of those places you put in Papists and other persons of Arbitrary Principles notwithstanding the Law had incapacitated the former and the other for want of Reputation and Interest could do their Country but little Service unless like Devils they could do mischief by serving your Designs and the Purposes of your Conspirators so that this Nation was in a deplorable Condition and must have perished had not God raised up the Prince of Orange now our King to come over and deliver us out of your Hands 4. As your Brother in his time hated the Peoples Petitioning him for the redress of their Grievances and had a
absolute Dominion and both are inveterate Enemies to your Majesty and this Protestant Kingdom and the French King is in all respects the most likely to support maintain and uphold them in those Attempts they being so exactly suitable to the inclinations of his Soul yea and of the Late King's Soul too notwithstanding your Majesty's being his Nephew and Son-in-Law into the bargain Sir these Conspirators have made it their business to asperse your Majesty's Government because of the great Taxes that are upon the Nation but I never find them to take notice of the Treasure that K. Charles II. wasted It 's true he was engaged in two most impious Wars against the Dutch and these Wars were very chargable to the Nation But besides those two Wars he spent abundance upon his Whores Pimps and Bauds under the notion of secret Service and yet we find nothing to be said of that Our Taxes are greater than ever the Nation paid but your Majesty's Loyal Subjects do not believe them so heavy but that they can and will hold it out many Years In a word there are none that retain their Loyalty and Duty to your Majesty but are highly pleased with your Majesty's being fully supplied to carry on so necessary a War and there is no good Man but will rather hazard his Person to keep the Enemy abroad than see either a French or Irish Army within your Kingdom of England destroying our Substance burning our Habitations and committing those Barbarities that were done in the Palatinate by the one or in Ireland in 41 by the other so that your Majesty may see that we that are English Men are not so much concerned at our Taxes as at the imminent Dangers your Majesty is daily exposed to both at home and abroad And being more confident than perhaps becomes me to judge the thoughts of Men I believe the Conspirators are more concerned that your Majesty is yet in the Land of the Living than at any of these Taxes of which I suppose their proportion is but small But your Majesty is not the first and only Prince that Fugitive Conspirators have traduced as these have filled the Ears of the French King and the Late King with monstrous Stories of your Majesty's Oppressing the Nation with unheard of Taxes thereby insinuating to him and his chargeable Guess how easy it would be to reduce the Nation that they might have farther opportunity of revelling and surfeiting upon his Treasure So the Fugitive Conspirators in the time of Q. Elizabeth were perpetually whispering in the Ears of the then King of Spain with prodigious Stories as false as Hell thereby to Exasperate that then great and Powerful Monarch against the Kingdom and did disparage the Forces of the said Queen and the posture and conduct of her Affairs in order to make him believe that the Conquest of England to be a matter of no great difficulty They did calumniate that Queen's Justice and blamed her proceedings against Seminaries and Romish Priests and for having a jealous eye upon those of their Communion for receiving those Priests and Jesuits thus sent into this Realm to seduce her Subjects and to withdraw them from their Obedience but our Conspirators could not traduce your Majesty or blacken your Government with those Points none might have been more easie and quiet under your happy Government than they if their Villainous Principles would have suffer'd them and not only so but they might have had Preferments too whilst poor Sufferers and your hearty Friends were Starving had not their damnable Insolencies and implacable hatred of your Majesty's Person and the welfare of the Kingdom been an obstacle in their way but that which I shall observe to your Majesty that they traduced that Queen with overcharging her Subjects with heavy and unaccustomed Taxes But it was then well known that no Prince could maintain such a Fleet at Sea and such an Army at Land without great Expence and Charge for her main end was to prevent a Foreign Invasion by which that wise Queen certainly knew would be more Expensive and Chargeable to the Nation than a Maintenance of a Force at Sea and Land would be to prevent it It is not unknown that your Majesties Prudence and Conduct hath appeared that tho your Majesty found the Nation in a Lamentable Condition the Trade Sunk Liberties Seized the People in a Ferment the Ensigns of the many Murders committed in the Reign of the Late King upon the Gates of the City and upon your Majesty's accession to the Throne a necessary War to be commenced yet the Trade hath in some measure been preserved Liberties restored the condition of the Nation much mended and like to be more and more improved both as to its Honour and Interest the People Quieted and Reprizals about to be made for the Murder of our Friends Your Majesty hath Reigned now Seven Years and never raised one Penny without the consent of Parliament and by the Authority of the same and the Late King had not Reigned seven Hours but he Levied Mony without Parliament But I would fain have these Fugitive Cut-throats that envy and malign your Majesty's easie Government to compare the necessities of Queen Elizabeth with the urgent occasion your Majesty hath of greater Taxes than ever that Princes could pretend to for it is most plain beyond all contradiction First that Wars are now more chargeable in this Age than in that which she Reigned Then it is plain your Majesty hath had but little or no Assistance the Dutch excepted from any Protestant Prince or any other Prince of the Confederacy but you have been rather necessitated to help them in the last place your Majesty hath every year of your Reign been obliged to have great Forces both at Sea and Land the Charges of your Majesties Predecessors have been for the most part Voluntary their Soldiers fought upon these Terms no Purchase no Pay and therefore the Subjects were not so much burthened by Foreign Wars but they went forth to Conquer Now its plain that for a King to defend his own Realm and the Liberties thereof is more Expensive than to Conquer other Princes Countries for the Conqueror would always pay himself and Army in his new Conquest But Sir that which is a wonder to me is this that they should complain to King Lewis and King James of the greatness of the Taxes here caâ—â—hey think that although he should comply with them once more to Invade us yet at the same time to charge your Majesty with that thing as a high Crime must be an unmannerly Charge since the French King himself doth the same every Year by his own Arbitrary Despotick Power that your Majesty hath only done by the Advice and Consent and Authority of a dutiful and loyal Parliament But truly Sir I must here acquaint your Majesty that some People have condemned the French King and King James too for giving Credit to these Conspirators for first they
deplorably deprived by the Re-establishment of Prelacy so it is evident not only to impartial Persons but to professed Enemies with what unparalell'd Patience and Constancy the People of God have endured all the Cruelty Injustice and Oppression that the Will and Malice of Prelacy and Malignants could invent and exercise And being most unwilling to act any thing which might import Opposition to lawful Authority or engage the Kingdoms in War although we have been all along groaning under the Over-turning the Work of Reformation Corruptions of Doctrine Slighting of Worship Despising of Ordinances the Changing the Ancient Church-Discipline and Government Thrusting out so many of our Faithful Ministers from their Charges Confining straightly Imprisoning Exileing yea and putting to Death many of them and Intruding upon their Flocks a Company of Insufficient Scandalous Persons Confining Imprisoning Torturing Tormenting Scourging and Stigmatizing Poor People Plundering their Goods Quartering upon them Rude Soldiers Selling their Persons to Foreign Plantations Horning and Intercommuning many of both Sexes whereby great Numbers in every corner of the Land were forced to leave their Dwellings Wives Children and Relations and made to wander as Pilgrims still in Hazard of their Lives none daring to Recet Harbour or Supply though Starving or so much as to speak to them though upon Death-bed without making themselves obnoxious to the same Punishments And these things acted under colour of Law in effect tending to banish not only all Sense of Religion but also to extinguish all natural Affection even amongst Persons of nearest Relations and likewise groaning under the intolerable Yoak of Oppression in our Civil Interest our Bodies Liberties and Estates so that all manner of Outrages have been most arbitrarily exercised upon us for a Tract of several Years past particularly in the Year 1678. by sending us an armed Host of Barbarous Savages contrary to all Law and Humanity and by laying on us several Impositions and Taxes as formerly so of late by a Meeting of Prelimited and Over-awed Members in the Convention of Estates in July 1678. for keeping up of an armed Force intrusted as to a great part of it into the Hands of avowed Papists or Favourers of them by whom sundry Invasions have been made upon us and most exorbitant Abuses and incredible Insolencies committed against us and we being continually sought after while meeting in Houses for Divine Worship Ministers and People frequently apprehended and most rigorously used and so being necessitated to attend the Lord's Ordinances in the Fields in the most desert Places and there also often hunted out and assaulted to the effusion of our Blood and killing of some whereby we were inveitably constrain'd either to defend our selves by Arms at those Meetings or be altogether deprived of the Gospel preached by Faithful Ministers and made absolute Slaves At one of which Meetings upon the First Day of June instant being the Lord's Day Captain Graham of Claverhouse being warranted by a late Proclamation to kill whomsoever he found in Arms at Field-Conventicles making Resistance did furiously assault the People assembled and further to provoke did cruelly bind like Beasts a Minister with some others whom he had found that same Morning in Houses and several being killed on both sides they knowing certainly that by Law they behoved if apprehended to dye they did stand to their own defence and continue together and there after many of our Friends and Countrymen being under the same Oppression expecting the same measure did freely offer their Assistance We therefore thus inevitably and of absolute Necessity forced to take this last Remedy tho Magistrates having shut the Door by a Law against Application that whatever our Grievances be either in things Civil or Sacred we have not the Privilege of a Supplicant do judge our selves bound to dcelare That these with many other horrid Grievances in Church and State which we purpose to manifest more fully hereafter are the true Causes of this our Lawful and Innocent Self-defence And we most solemnly and in the presence of Almighty God the Searcher of all Hearts declare that the true Reasons of our continuing in Arms candidly and sincerely are these First The defending and securing of the true Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Government founded upon the Word of God and summarily comprehended in our Confessions of Faith and Catechism and established by the Laws of this Land to which King Nobles and People are solemnly sworn and engaged in our National Solemn League and Covenant and more particularly the Defending and Maintaining the Kingly Authority of our Lord Jesus Christ over his Church against all sinful Supremacy derogatory thereto and incroaching thereupon Second The preserving and defending the King's Majesty his Person and Authority in the Preservation and Defence of that true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom that the World may bear Witness with our Consciences of our Loyalty and that we have no Thoughts nor Intention to diminish his just Power and Greatness Third The Obtaining of a Free and United Parliament and a Free and General Assembly in Order to the Redressing of our foresaid Grievances for the preventing the eminent Danger of Popery and extirpating Prelacy from amongst us This therefore being the Cause we appear for and resolve in God's Name to own hereby homologating all the Testimonies of faithful Sufferers for the Truth in Scotland these eighteen Years by gone We humbly request the King's Majesty to restore all things as he found them when God brought him home to his Crown and Kingdoms and if that cannot be obtained then we heartily and humbly invite and intreat beseech and obtest by the Bowels of Jesus Christ all who are under the same Bonds with us to occur in this Common Cause and Interest and that they will not stand still and see not only us oppressed but this foresaid Cause ruined Adversaries proudly and highly insult against God and all good Men Friends of the Truth discouraged yea the Protestant Cause in Britain and Ireland and even your selves within a little time made a Prey of or else forced when we are broken which the good Lord prevent dreadfully to wrong your Consciences Finally because we desire no Man's hurt or blood we request our Country-men now the standing Forces of this Kingdom some of them being our Friends and Kinsmen not to fight against us least in so doing they be found fighting against the Lord whose Cause and Quarrel we are sure he will own and signally countenance seeing we fight under his Banner who is the Lord of Hosts This Sir you know was the Declaration of these Blessed Servants of God but you had not filled up the measure of your Sins and therefore God was pleased to deliver these miserably enslaved wretches into your hands and they were made a prey to your never to be forgotten Cut-throats and some of them sealed their Testimony of Jesus with their Blood You may remember what Havock your Popish Crew made of them
Set of Men ready to Abhor and Detest such Popular Petitions though it was the Subjects Right to Petition the King for the redress of Grievances under which they groaned in his Reign So you was pleased to shew your aversness to Petitioning witness your proceeding against the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Bishops who offered a most humble Petition to you in terms full of Respect and exceeded not the number limited by Law in which they set forth their Reasons for which they could not obey a certain Order which you by the Advice of your Popish Villains sent them to appoint their Clergy to Read in their Chruches the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience they were sent to Prison and afterwards brought to a Tryal as if they had been guilty of some enormous Crime they were not only obliged to defend themselves under this Persecution but also to appear before four Villains one Professed Papist and the other three had not taken the Test and by Consequence were Men whose Interest and Inclination too led them to Condemn them And the Judges that gave their Opinion in favour of those Prelates were turned out thus you may see a fourth Instance you have given us of your invading our Civil Rights But Sir while I speak to you of these things give me leave to plead with you What King was there that ever reigned that was too great to be petitioned by the meanest of his Subjects It cannot be pretended that any Kings how great soever their Power hath been and how Arbitrary and Dispotick they have been in the exercise of this Power have ever reckoned it a Crime for their Subjects to come with all submission and respect in a due number not exceeding the limits of the Law to represent Reasons why they could not execute such or such an Order Deal freely with the World send to your Dispensing Rogues and ask them whether it were one of the remains of the Crown that impowered you to wrest out of the Hands of the Subject this undoubted Right of Petitioning the Prince for theredress of Grieveances 5. How did you treat a Peer of this Realm Was he not used by you and your villanious Conspirators as a Criminal only because he said That the Subjects were not bound to obey the Orders of a Popish Justice of the Peace Tho it was evident that such being by Law rendred uncapable of all such Trusts No regard was due to any of their Orders This being the security which the People of England had and still have by the Law for their Lives Liberties Honours and Estates that they are not subjected to the Arbitrary Proceedings of Papists that were contrary to Law put into any Imployment Civil or Military This was another instance of the invasion you made upon us in respect of our Civil Rights and Liberties and manifested your self to be a Man for Arbitrary Government in subjecting our Persons and Estates to the Arbitrary Proceedings of Popish Magistrates and Officers under you 6. You apprehending that the great Remedy of your Grievances and Security of our Religion was a Free Parliament and least you might lie under a necessity of calling one you and your Accomplices did endeavour to make it impossible or at least very difficult to be obtained for you could not but apprehend that a Lawful Parliament being once Assembled would call you and your Villains to an account for all your open Violations of the Law and for your Plots and Conspiracies against the Protestant Religion and the Lives and Liberties of the People of England you endeavoured under the specious pretence of Liberty of Conscience first to sow Divisions between the Protestants of the Church of England and Protestant Dissenters the Design being laid to engage all Protestants that are equally concerned to preserve themselves from Popish Oppression into mutual Quarrellings So that by these some Advantages might be taken by you to bring about your Villainous Designs and Purposes and that both in the Election of Members of Parliament and afterwards in the Parliament it self for you could not but see that if all Protestants did enter into a mutual good understanding one with another and concur together in the preserving our Civil Rights and Liberties that it would have been possible for you and your Banditti to accomplish your wicked Ends. What could we expect from you when you struck at the Foundation of all our Civil Rights and Liberties in the hindring the Nation of the Choice of a Free and Lawful Parliament For did you not require all Persons in the several Counties of England that either were in any Imployment or were in any considerable Esteem to declare before hand that they would concur in the repeal of the Test and the Penal Laws and that they would give their Voices in the Elections to Parliament only for such as would concur in it such as would not thus pre-engage themselves were turned out of all Imployments and others who entred into these Engagements were put into their Places many of which are Papists and contrary to the Charters and Priviledges of those Burroughs that have a right to send Burgesses to Parliament You ordered such Regulations to be made as you thought fit and necessary for the assuring your self and your villainous Conspirators of all the Members that were to be chosen by those Corporations and by this means you gave your self and Tribe hope to avoid the being called to an account for your Villanies though it was then and is still apparent that all Acts made by Popish Magistrates are Null and Void of themselves so that no Parliament could have been lawful for which Elections and Returns had been made by your Popish Sheriffs and Mayors of Towns and therefore as long as the Authority and Magistracy was in such Hands it was impossible for us to have had a Lawful and a Free Parliament You might have known that the Constitution of the English Government and Custom time out of mind All Elections of Parliament Men ought to be made with an intire Liberty without any sort of force or the requiring the Electors to choose such persons as should be named to them and the persons thus freely Elected ought to give their Opinions freely upon all Matters that are brought before them they having the good of the Nation before their Eyes and following in all things the dictates of their Consciences Therefore you having usurped an illegal Authority and resolving upon the utmost Violations of our Laws you would not give us the least hopes of having our Grievances redressed by a Free Parliament legally called and chosen It is true you would have called one in which all Elections should have been carried by Fraud and Force and might have been composed of such persons of whom you and your Trayterous Crew would have been well assured in which all things would have been carried on by their Direction and Interest without any regard to the Good and Welfare of