prevent the Miseries which are ready to overwhelm this whole Nation by a Civil War and tho' all Our endeavours tending to the composing of those unhappy Differences betwixt Us and our two Houses of Parliament though pursued by us with all zeal and sincerity have been hitherto without that success We hoped for yet such is Our constant and earnest care to preserve the publick Peace that we shall not be discouraged from using any expedient which by the blessing of the God of Mercy may lay a firm foundation of Peace and Happiness to all Our good Subjects To this end observing that many mistakes have arisen by the Messages Petitions and Answers betwixt Us and Our two Houses of Parliament which happily may be prevented by some other way of Treaty wherein the matters in difference may be more clearly understood and more freely transacted We have thought fit to propound to you that some fit persons may be by you enabled to treat with the like Number to be authorized by Us in such a manner and with such freedom of debate as may best tend to that happy conclusion which all good men desire The peace of the Kingdom wherein as We promise in the word of a King all safety and encouragement to such as shall be sent unto Us if you shall chuse the place where We are for the Treaty which we wholly leave to you presuming on the like care of the safety of those We shall imploy if you shall name another place so We assure you and all Our good Subjects that to the best of Our Understanding nothing shall be therein wanting on Our part which may advance the true Protestant Religion oppose Popery and Superstition secure the Law of the land upon which is built as well Our just Prerogative as the Propriety and Liberty of the Subject confirm all just Power and Priviledges of Parliament and render Us and Our People truly happy by a good understanding betwixt Us and Our two Houses of Parliament Bring with you as firm resolutions to do your Duty and let all Our People joyn with Us in Our Prayers to Almighty God for his blessing upon this Work If this Proposition shall be rejected by you We have done Our duty so amply that God will absolve Us from the guilt of any of that Blood which must be spilt And what opinion soever other men may have of Our Power We assure you nothing but Our Christian and pious care to prevent the effusion of Blood hath begot this motion Our provision of Men Arms and Money being such as may secure Us from further Violence till it please God to open the Eyes of Our People IV. From ...... Sept. 5. MDCXLII In pursuance of the former WE will not repeat what means We have used to prevent the dangerous and distracted Estate of the Kingdom nor how these means have been interpreted because being desirous to avoid effusion of Blood We are willing to decline all memory of former bitterness that might make Our offer of a Treaty less readily accepted We never did declare nor ever intended to declare both Our Houses of Parliament Traytors or set up Our Standard against them and much less to put them and this Kingdom out of Our protection We utterly profess against it before God and the World And further to remove all possible scruples which may hinder the Treaty so much desired by Us We hereby promise so that a day be appointed by you for the revoking of your Declarations against all Persons as Traytors or otherwise for assisting Us We shall with all chearfulness upon the same day recal Our Proclamations and Declarations and take down Our Standard in which Treaty We shall be ready to grant any thing that shall be really for the good of Our Subjects Conjuring you to consider the bleeding condition of Ireland and the dangerous condition of England in as high a degree as by these Our offers We have declared Our Self to do And assuring you that Our chief desire in this World is to beget a good Understanding and mutual Confidence betwixt Us and Our two Houses of Parliament V. From ...... Sept. 11. MDCXLII In Replie to the Answer of both Houses to the former WHO have taken most ways used most endeavours and made most real expressions to prevent the present Distractions and Dangers let all the World judge as well by former passages as Our two last Messages which have been so fruitless that though We have descended to desire and press it not so much as a Treaty can be obtained unless We would denude Our self of all force to defend Us from a visible strength marching against Us and admit those persons accounted as Traytors to Us who according to their Duty their Oaths of Allegiance and the Law have appeared in defence of Us their King and Liege Lord whom We are bound in Conscience and Honour to preserve though We disclaimed all Our Proclamations and Declarations and the erecting of Our Standard as against Our Parliament All We have now left in Our power is to express the deep sense We have of the publick Misery of this Kingdom in which is involved that of Our distressed Protestants of Ireland and to apply Our self to Our necessary defence wherein We wholly relie upon the Providence of God the Justice of Our Cause and the Affection of Our good People so far We are from putting them out of Our Protection When you shall desire a Treaty of Us We shall piously remember whose blood is to be spilt in this quarrel and chearfully embrace it And as no other reason induced Us to leave Our City of London but that with Honour and Safety We could not stay there nor to raise any force but for the necessary defence of Our Person and the Law against Levies in opposition to both so We shall suddenly and most willingly return to the one and disband the other as soon as those causes shall be removed The God of Heaven direct you and in Mercy divert those Judgments which hang over this Nation and so deal with Us and Our Posterity as We desire the preservation and advancement of the true Protestant Religion and the Law and Liberty of the Subject the just Rights of Parliament and the Peace of the Kingdom VI. From BRAINFORD Nov. 12. MDCXLII After the Defeat of the Parliament Forces at EDGE-HILL and at BRAINFORD WHereas the last Night being the eleventh of November after the departure of the Committee of both Our Houses with Our gracious Answer to their Petition We received certain information having till then heard nothing of it either from the Houses Committee or otherwise that the L. of Essex had drawn his Forces out of London towards Us which hath necessitated Our sudden resolution to march with Our Forces to Brainford We have thought hereby fit to signifie to both Our Houses of Parliament that we are no less desirous of the Peace of the Kingdom than We express in Our
judge as well by former Passages as by Our two last Messages which have been so fruitless that though We have descended to desire and press it not so much as a Treaty can be obtained unless We would denude Our Self of all force to defend Vs from a visible strength marching against Vs and admit those Persons as Traitors to Vs who according to their Duty their Oaths of Allegiance and the Law have appeared in defence of Vs their King and Liege Lord whom We are bound in Conscience and Honour to preserve though We disclaimed all our Proclamations and Declarations and the erecting of Our Standard as against Our Parliament All We have now left in Our Power is to express the deep sense We have of the publick Misery of this Kingdom in which is involved that of Our distressed Protestants of Ireland and to apply Our Self to Our necessary Defence wherein We wholly rely upon the Providence of God the Justice of Our Cause and the Affection of Our good People so far We are from putting them out of Our Protection When you shall desire a Treaty of Vs We shall piously remember whose blood is to be spilt in this Quarrel and chearfully embrace it And as no other Reason induced Vs to leave Our City of London but that with Honour and Safety We could not stay there nor raise any Force but for the necessary defence of Our Person and the Law against Levies in opposition to both so We shall suddenly and most willingly return to the one and disband the other as soon as those causes shall be removed The God of Heaven direct you and in mercy divert those Judgments which hang over this Nation and so deal with Vs and Our Posterity as We desire the Preservation and Advancement of the true Protestant Religion the Laws and the Liberty of the Subject the just Rights of Parliament and the Peace of the Kingdom But as if all these gracious Messages had been the effects only of Our Weakness and instances of Our want of Power to resist that torrent they deal at last more plainly with Us and after many sharp causeless and unjust Reproaches they tell Us in plain English that without putting Our Self absolutely into their hands and deserting all Our own Force and the Protection of all those who have faithfully appeared for Us according to their Duty there would be no means of a Treaty although Our extraordinary desire of Peace had prevailed with Us to offer to recall Our most just Declarations and to take down Our Standard set up for Our necessary defence so their unjustifiable Declarations might be likewise recalled Their Answer follows in these words WE the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled do present this our humble Answer to Your Majesty's Message of the 11th of this instant Month of September When we consider the Oppressions Rapines Firing of Houses Murthers even at this time whilst Your Majesty propounds a Treaty committed upon Your good Subjects by Your Soldiers in the presence and by the Authority of their Commanders being of the number of those whom Your Majesty holds Your self bound in Honour and Conscience to protect as Persons doing their Duties We cannot think Your Majesty hath done all that in You lies to prevent or remove the present Distractions nor so long as Your Majesty will admit no Peace without securing the Authors and Instruments of these Mischiefs from the Justice of the Parliament which yet shall be ever dispens'd with all requisite Moderation and distinction of Offences although some of those Persons be such in whose Preservation Your Kingdom cannot be safe nor the unquestionable Rights and Priviledges of Parliament be maintain'd without which the Power and Dignity thereof will fall into contempt We beseech Your Majesty therefore to consider Your Expressions That God should deal with You and Your Posterity as Your Majesty desires the Preservation of the just Rights of Parliament which being undeniable in the Trying of such as we have declared to be Delinquents we shall believe Your Majesty both towards Your self and Parliament will not in this Priviledge we are most sensible of deny us that which belongs unto the meanest Court of Justice in this Kingdom Neither hath Your Majesty cause to complain that You are denied a Treaty when we offer all that a Treaty can produce or Your Majesty expect Security Honour Service Obedience Support and all other effects of an Humble Loyal and Faithful Subjection and seek nothing but that our Religion Liberty Peace of the Kingdom Safety of the Parliament may be secured from the open Violence and cunning Practices of a wicked party who have long plotted our ruin and destruction And if there were any Cause of Treaty we know no competent Persons to Treat betwixt the King and Parliament and if both Cause and Persons were such as to invite Treaty the Season is altogether unfit whilst Your Majesty's Standard is up and Your Proclamations and Declarations unrecalled whereby Your Parliament is charged with Treason If Your Majesty shall persist to make Your self a shield and defence to those Instruments and shall continue to reject our faithful and necessary Advice for securing and maintaining Religion and Liberty with the Peace of the Kingdom and Safety of the Parliament we doubt not but to indifferent judgments it will easily appear who is most tender of that Innocent Blood which is like to be spilt in this Cause Your Majesty who by such persisting doth endanger Your self and Your Kingdoms or we who are willing to hazard our selves to preserve both We humbly beseech Your Majesty to consider how impossible it is that any Protestation though published in Your Majesty's name of Your tenderness of the Miseries of Your Protestant Subjects in Ireland of Your Resolution to maintain the Protestant Religion and Laws of this Kingdom can give satisfaction to reasonable and indifferent men when at the same time divers of the Irish Traitors and Rebels the known Favourers of them and Agents for them are admitted to Your Majesty's presence with Grace and Favour and some of them imployed in Your service when the Cloaths Munition Horses and other Necessaries bought by your Parliament and sent for the supply of the Army against the Rebels there are violently taken away some by Your Majesty's Command others by Your Ministers and applied to the maintenance of an unnatural War against Your People here All this notwithstanding as we never gave Your Majesty any just cause of withdrawing Your self from Your great Council so it hath ever been and shall ever be far from us to give any impediment to Your Return or to neglect any proper means of curing the Distempers of the Kingdom and closing the dangerous Breaches betwixt Your Majesty and Your Parliament according to the great Trust which lies upon us and if Your Majesty shall now be pleased to come back to Your Parliament without Your Forces we shall be ready to secure Your Royal Person
may in all reason be thought to have more of Gifts and Graces enabling them to compose with serious deliberation and concurrent advice such Forms of Prayers as may best fit the Churches common wants inform the Hearers understanding and stir up that fiduciary and fervent application of their spirits wherein consists the very life and soul of Prayer and that so much pretended Spirit of Prayer than any private man by his solitary abilities can be presumed to have which what they are many times even there where they make a great noise and shew the affectations emptiness impertinency rudeness confusions flatness levity obscurity vain and ridiculous repetitions the sensless and oft-times blasphemous expressions all these burthened with a most tedious and intolerable length do sufficiently convince all men but those who glory in that Pharisaick way Wherein men must be strangely impudent and flatterers of themselves not to have an infinite shame of what they so do and say in things of so sacred a nature before God and the Church after so ridiculous and indeed profane a manner Nor can it be expected but that in duties of frequent performance as Sacramental administrations and the like which are still the same Ministers must either come to use their own Forms constantly which are not like to be so sound or comprehensive of the nature of the Duty as Forms of Publick composure or else they must every time affect new expressions when the Subject is the same which can hardly be presumed in any mans greatest sufficiencies not to want many times much of that compleatness order and gravity becoming those Duties which by this means are exposed at every celebration to every Ministers private Infirmities Indispositions Errors Disorders and Defects both for Judgment and Expression A serious sense of which inconveniences in the Church unavoidably following every mans several manner of officiating no doubt first occasioned the Wisdom and Piety of the Ancient Churches to remedy those mischiefs by the use of constant Liturgies of Publick composure The want of which I believe this Church will sufficiently feel when the unhappy fruits of many mens ungoverned Ignorance and confident defects shall be discovered in more Errors Schisms Disorders and uncharitable Distractions in Religion which are already but too many the more is the pity However if Violence must needs bring in and abet those Innovations that men may not seem to have nothing to do which Law Reason and Religion forbids at least to be so obtruded as wholly to justle out the Publick Liturgy Yet nothing can excuse that most unjust and partial severity of those men who either lately had subscribed to used and maintained the Service-book or refusing to use it cryed out of the rigor of the Laws and Bishops which suffered them not to use the liberty of their Consciences in not using it That these men I say should so suddenly change the Liturgy into a Directory as if the Spirit needed help for Invention tho not for Expresions or as if matter prescribed did not as much stint and obstruct the Spirit as if it were cloathed in and confined to fit words So slight and easie is that Legerdemain which will serve to delude the Vulgar That further they should use such severity as not to suffer without penalty any to use the Common-prayer-Book publickly although their Consciences bind them to it as a duty of Piety to God and Obedience to the Laws Thus I see no men are prone to be greater Tyrants and more rigorous exacters upon others to conform to their illegal Novelties than such whose Pride was formerly least disposed to the obedience of lawful constitutions and whose licentious humors most pretended conscientious liberties which freedom with much regret they now allow to Me and my Chaplains when they may have leave to serve Me whose Abilities even in their extemporary way comes not short of the others but their Modesty and Learning far exceeds the most of them But this matter is of so popular a nature as some men knew it would not bear learned and sober Debates lest being convinced by the evidence of Reason as well as Laws they should have been driven either to sin more against their Knowledg by taking away the Liturgy or to displease some Faction of the People by continuing the use of it Tho I believe they have offended more considerable men not only for their numbers and estates but for their weighty and judicious Piety than those are whose Weakness or Giddiness they sought to gratify by taking it away One of the greatest faults some men found with the Common-Prayer-Book I believe was this that it taught them to pray so oft for Me to which Petitions they had not Loyalty enough to say Amen nor yet Charity enough to forbear Reproaches and even Cursings of Me in their own Forms in stead of praying for Me. I wish their Repentance may be their only Punishment that seeing the mischiefs which the disuse of Publick Liturgies hath already produced they may restore that credit use and reverence to them which by the ancient Churches were given to Set Forms of sound and wholesom words And Thou O Lord which art the same God blessed for ever whose Mercies are full of variety and yet of constancy Thou deniest us not a new and fresh sense of our old and daily wants nor despisest renewed affections joyned to constant expressions Let us not want the benefit of thy Churches united and well-advised Devotions Let the matters of our Prayers be agreeable to thy will which is always the same and the fervency of our spirits to the motions of thy Holy Spirit in us And then we doubt not but thy Spiritual perfections are such as Thou art neither to be pleased with affected Novelties for matter or manner nor offended with the Pious constancy of our Petitions in them both Whose variety or constancy Thou hast no where either forbidden or commanded but left them to the Piety and Prudence of thy Church that both may be used neither despised Keep men in that pious moderation of their Judgments in matters of Religion that their Ignorance may not offend others nor their opinion of their own Abilities tempt them to deprive others of what they may lawfully and devoutly use to help their infirmities And since the advantage of Error consists in Novelty and Variety as Truth 's in Vnity and Constancy suffer not thy Church to be pestered with Errors and deformed with Vndecencies in thy Service under the pretence of Variety and Novelty nor to be deprived of Truth Vnity and Order under this fallacy That Constancy is the cause of Formality Lord keep us from formal Hypocrifie in our own hearts and then we know that praying to Thee or praising of Thee with David and other Holy men in the same Forms cannot hurt us Give us Wisdom to amend what is amiss within us and there will be less to mend without us Evermore defend and deliver thy Church
by His Majesty or us in order to Peace here being so great a Condescending from a King to Subjects all indifferent Advantages left to them both for time and place of Treaty and choice of Persons to Treat But what their Intentions to Peace are will appear by their Letter enclosed in one from their General to the Earl of Forth both which are as followeth My Lord I Am commanded by both Houses of Parliament to send a Trumpeter with the inclosed Letter to His Majesty which I desire your Lordship may be most humbly presented to His Majesty I rest Essex-House March 9. 1643. Your Lordships humble Servant Essex May it please Your MAJESTY WE the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England taking into our Consideration a Letter sent from Your Majesty dated the third of March instant and directed to the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Westminster which by the Contents of a Letter from the Earl of Forth unto the Lord General the Earl of Essex we conceive was intended to our selves have resolved with the concurrent advice and consent of the Commissioners of the Kingdom of Scotland to represent to Your Majesty in all humility and plainness as followeth That as we have used all means for a just and safe Peace so will we never be wanting to do our utmost for the procuring thereof But when we consider the Expressions in that Letter of Your Majesty's we have more sad and dispairing thoughts of attaining the same than ever because thereby those Persons now assembled at Oxford who contrary to their Duty have deserted Your Parliament are put into an equal Condition with it and this present Parliament convened according to the known and Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom the continuance whereof is established by a Law consented unto by Your Majesty is in effect denied to be a Parliament The Scope and Intention of that Letter being to make provision how all the Members as is pretended of both Houses may securely meet in a full and free Convention of Parliament Whereof no other conclusion can be made but that this present Parliament is not a full nor free Convention and that to make it a full and free Convention of Parliament the presence of those is necessary who notwithstanding that they have deserted that great Trust and do levy War against the Parliament are pretended to be Members of the two Houses of Parliament And hereupon we think our selves bound to let Your Majesty know That seeing the Continuance of this Parliament is settled by a Law which as all other Laws of Your Kingdoms Your Majesty hath sworn to maintain as we are sworn to our Allegiance to Your Majesty these obligations being reciprocal we must in duty and accordingly are resolved with our Lives and Fortunes to defend and preserve the Just Rights and full Power of this Parliament And do beseech Your Majesty to be assured that Your Majesty's Royal and hearty Concurrence with us herein will be the most effectual and ready means of procuring a firm and lasting Peace in all Your Majesty's Dominions and of begetting a perfect understanding between Your Majesty and Your People without which Your Majesty's most earnest Professions and our most real Intentions concerning the same must necessarily be frustrated And in case Your Majesty's three Kingdoms should by reason thereof remain in this sad and bleeding Condition tending by the continuance of this unnatural War to their Ruine Your Majesty cannot be the least nor the last Sufferer God in his goodness incline Your Royal Breast out of pity and compassion to those deep Sufferings of Your Innocent People to put a speedy and happy issue to these desperate Evils by the joynt Advice of both Your Kingdoms now happily united in this Cause by their late solemn League and Covenant Which as it will prove the surest Remedy so is it the earnest prayer of Your Majesty's Loyal Subjects the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England Westminster the 9 of March 1643. Gray of Wark Speaker of the House of Peers in Parliament pro tempore William Lenthall Speaker of the Commons House in Parliament Whosoever considers that this should be a Letter from Subjects might well think it very unbeseeming Language in them to call His Majesty's earnest endeavours for Peace but Professions and their own feigned pretence most real Intentions but much more menacing Language that is Majesty cannot be the least or last Sufferer which expressions from Subjects in Arms to their Soveraign what dangerous Construction they may admit we are unwilling to mention But we need not wonder at the manner of their expressions when we see in this Letter the Parliament it self as far as in them lies destroyed and those who here style themselves the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England not to resolve upon their Answer to their King without the concurrent advice and consent of the Commissioners as they call them of the Kingdom of Scotland If they had only taken the Advice of the Scotish Commissioners they had broken the Fundamental Constitution of Parliament the very Writs of Summons the Foundation of all Power in Parliament being in express terms for the Lords to treat and advise with the King and the Peers of the Kingdom of England and for the Commons to do and consent to those things which by that Common-Council of England should be ordained thereby excluding all others But their League it seems is gone further the Scots must consent as well as advise so that they have gotten a negative voice and they who in the former Letter would be the Kings only Council are now become no Council without the Scotish Commissioners The truth is they have besides the solemn League and Covenant with the Scots which their Letter mentions a strange and traitourous presumption for Subjects to make a Covenant and League with Subjects of another Kingdom without their Prince made private bargains with the Scots touching our Estates and a private agreement not to treat without their consent as some of themselves being afraid of a Treaty openly declared to the Common-Council of London And therefore 't is no wonder that being touched to the quick with the apprehension that they are not nor can be in this condition a full and free Convention of Parliament they charge us with deserting our Trust and would have us to be no Members of the Parliament They may remember it was our want of freedom within and the seditious Tumults without their many multiplied Treasons there and imposing traitourous Oaths which inforced our absence But concerning that and the want of freedom in Parliament we shall say no more here that being the Subject of another Declaration only we wish them to consider by what Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom which they have lately wrested to serve all turns they can exclude us from our Votes in Parliament who were duely summoned chosen and returned Members of Parliament and
take in those of another Kingdom to their Resolutions who are not bound by our Laws But what violation soever they make of the Laws they are forward to put the King in mind of His Duty and therefore tell Him That He is sworn to maintain the Laws as they are sworn to their Allegiance to Him these Obligations being reciprocal It is true in some sense that the Oath of the King and Subjects is reciprocal that is each is bound to perform what they swear the King as well as the Subjects but he that will well weigh their Letter and make one part have connexion with the other and examine that part of their Covenant whereby they swear they will defend the Kings Person and Authority no further or otherwise than in preservation of their Religion and Liberties may easily find another construction viz. That the Subjects Allegiance is no longer due than the King performs His Duty nay no longer than He in their opinion observes His Duty whereof they themselves must be Judges and if He fail in His Duty they may take up Arms against Him A Principle which as it is utterly destructive to all Government so we believe they themselves dare not plainly avow it lest as they now make use of it against the King so the People finding their failure of Duty and breach of Trust should hereafter practise it by taking up Arms against them and so shake of that yoak of Tyranny imposed by their fellow Subjects which lies so heavy upon them It were well as they still press upon the King maintenance of the Laws they would also know that their Obligation to observe the same is reciprocal and while they here resolve to defend and preserve the full Power of this Parliament which in their sense can be no other than the Power they have exercised this Parliament they would take notice that they are therein so far from observation of the Laws that they desperately resolve an utter subversion of them For what can more tend to the destruction of the Laws than to usurp a Power to themselves without the King and against His will to raise Arms to attribute to their Orders or pretended Ordinances the power of Laws and Statutes to inforce Contributions Loans and Taxes of all sorts from the Subject to imprison without cause shewed and then prohibit Writs of Habeas Corpus for their enlargement to lay Excises upon all Commodities to command and dispose of the Lives and Estates of the free-born Subjects of this Kingdom at their pleasure to impose Tonnage and Poundage contrary to the Law declared in the late Act for Tonnage and Poundage and all this done and justified as by a legal civil Power founded and inherent in them All which are manifest breaches of the Petition of Right and Magna Charta the great Evidence of the Liberties of England which Charter by express words binds them and us though assembled in Parliament as well as the King And though it be not now as heretofore it hath been taken by solemn Oath on the Peoples part as well as on the Kings nor a Curse as heretofore pronounced on the Violators yet they having taken a Protestation to maintain the Laws and the Liberties and Properties of the Subject and inclusively that Charter let them take heed whilst they make use of this their pretended Power to the destruction of the Law lest a Curse fall upon them and upon their Posterity God knoweth and it is too certain a truth that our selves and many other good Subjects in this Kindom even under the Power of the Kings Army have suffered exceedingly in Liberty and Estates during this present Rebellion by many heavy Charges the sad consideration whereof makes our hearts bleed because we can see no way for relief so long as this unnatural Rebellion continues But as these things were first practised by them and thereby necessitated upon the Kings Army so it was never yet pretended that they were done by virtue of a Law but either by Consent or by the unhappy and unavoidable exigences of War and to expire with the present Rebellion which God in mercy hasten For our parts we have the inward comfort of our own Consciences witnessing with us that we have improved all opportunities and advantages for the restoring of this Kingdom to its former Peace and we must witness for His Majesty His most hearty desires thereof And though both His Majesty and our endeavours therein have been made frustrate yet God in his great goodness hath raised up our spirits not to desert our Religion our King our Laws our Lives the Liberties of us English free-born Subjects and by God's assistance and His Majesty's concurrence we do resolve to unite our selves as one Man and cheerfully adventure our Lives and Estates for the maintenance and defence of the true Reformed Protestant Religion of the Church of England of which we profess our selves to be for the defence of the Kings Person and Rights of His Crown for the regaining and maintaining the Rights and Privileges of Parliament and the Liberty of the Subjects Person and Property of his Estate according to the known Laws of the Land to repel those of the Stotish Nation that have in a warlike manner entred this Realm and to reduce the Subjects thereof now in Rebellion to the Kings Obedience And we doubt not but the same God will enlighten the eyes of the poor deceived People of this Land like true-hearted honest English-Men to joyn unanimously with us in so just and pious a work And the God of Heaven prosper us according to the goodness of the Cause we have in hand The Names of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford who did subscribe the Letter to the Earl of Essex dated January 27. 1643. CHARLES P. YORK CUMBERLAND Ed. Littleton C. S. Fra. Cottington D. Richmond M. Hartford E. Lindsey E. Dorset E. Shrewsbury E. Bath E. Southampton E. Leicester E. Northampton E. Devonshire E. Carlisle E. Bristol E. Berkshire E. Cleveland E. Rivers E. Dover E. Peterburgh E. Kingston E. Newport E. Portland V. Conway L. Digby L. Mowbray and Maltravers L. Wentworth L. Cromwell L. Rich. L. Paget L. Chandois L. Howard of Charleton L. Lovelace L. Savile L. Mohun L. Dunsmore L. Seymour L. Percy L. Wilmott L. Leigh L. Hatton L. Jermyn L. Carrington JOhn Fettiplace Esq Sir Alex. Denton Sir John Packington Sir Tho. Smith F. Gamul Esq Jo. Harris Esq Joseph Jane Esq Rich. Edgcombe Esq Jonathan Rashleigh Esq G. Fane Esq P. Edgcombe Esq Will. Glanvill Esq Sir Ro. Holborne Sir Ra. Sydenham Fra. Godolphin Esq Geo. Parry D. of Law Amb. Manaton Esq Ri. Vivian Esq Jo. Polewheele Esq John Arundell Esq Tho. Lower Esq Sir Edw. Hide Will. Allestree Esq Sir Geo. Stonehouse Ed. Seymour Esq Peter Sainthill Esq Sir Will. Poole Roger Matthew Esq Ri. Arundell Esq Ro. Walker Esq Giles Strangwaies Esq Sir John Strangwaies Sir Tho. Hele. Sir Ger. Naper Sam. Turner
County of Surrey directed to the House of Peers concluded with this close That they should be in duty obliged to mantain their Lordships so far as they should be united with the House of Commons in their just and pious proceedings sufficiently intimating that if they joyned not with the House of Commons they then meant as much as others had plainly professed About the same time a Citizen saying at the Bar of the House of Commons That they heard there were Lords who refused to consent and concur with them and that they would gladly know their names or words to that effect a Petition in the name of many thousand poor People in and about the City of London was directed to the House of Commons taking notice of a malignant Faction that made abortive all their good motions which tended to the Peace and Tranquillity of this Kingdom desiring that those noble Worthies of the House of Peers who concurred with them in their happy Votes might be earnestly desired to joyn with that Honourable House and to sit and Vote together as one entire body and professing that unless some speedy remedy were taken for the removing all such Obstructions as hindred the happy progress of their great Endeavours their Petitioners should not rest in quietness but should be forced to lay hold on the next remedy which was at hand to remove the disturbers of the Peace and Want and necessity breaking the bounds of Modesty not to leave any means unessayed for their relief lastly adding that the cry of the poor and needy was that such Persons who were the obstacles of their Peace and the hinderers of the happy proceedings of this Parliament might be forthwith publickly declared whose removal they conceived would put a period to those Distractions And this Petition was brought up to the House of Lords by the House of Commons at a Conference And after the same day Master Hollis a Member of the House of Commons in a Message from that House pressed the Lords at their Bar to joyn with the House of Commons in their desire about the Militia and farther with many other expressions of like nature desired in words to this effect That if that desire of the House of Commons were not assented unto those Lords who were willing to concur would find some means to make themselves known that it might be known who were against them and they might make it known to those that sent them After which Petition so strangely framed countenanced and seconded many Lords thereupon withdrawing themselves the Vote in order to the Militia twice before rejected was then passed After these and other unparliamentary Actions many things rejected and settled upon solemn debate were again after many Threats and Menaces resumed altered and determined contrary to the Custom and Laws of Parliament And so many of us withdrew our selves from thence where we could not Sit Speak and Vote with Honour Freedom and Safety and are now kept from thence for our Duty and Loyalty to our Sovereign And though some of us Sate and continued there long after this hoping that we might have been able to have prevented the growth and progress of farther Mischief yet since the Privilege of Parliament is so substantial and entire a Right that as the Invasion of the Liberties of either House is an injury to the other and the whole Kingdom so the Violence and Assaults upon any of our fellow-Members for expressing their opinions in matters of debate were instances to us what we were to look for when we should be known to dissent from what was expected and under that consideration every one of our just Liberties suffered violation Many of us for these and other reasons after His Majesty Himself was by many Indignities and Force driven from Westminster have been contrary to the Right and Freedom of Parliament Voted out of the House without committing any Crime and some of us without hearing or so much as being summoned to be heard and so our Countries for which we were and are trusted have been without any Proxies or Persons trusted on their behalf An Army hath been raised without and against His Majesty's Consent and a Protestation enjoyned to live and die with the Earl of Essex their General of that Army and a Member now amongst us refusing to take that Protestation was told That if he left not the Town speedily he should be committed to the Tower or knocked on the head by the Souldiers All Persons even the Members of both Houses have been and now are forced or injoyned to contribute for the maintenance and support of that Army A trayterous Covenant is since taken by the Members who remain and imposed upon the Kingdom That they will to their power assist the Forces raised and continued by both Houses of Parliament against the Forces raised by the King with many other Clauses directly contrary to their Allegiance and another for the alteration of the Covenant of the Church established by Law and such Members as have refused according to their Duty and Conscience to take those Covenants have been imprisoned or expelled so as they have suffered none to reside with them but those who are engaged with them in their desperate courses The whole Power and Authority of both Houses is delegated against the Law and nature of Parliament to a close Committee which assumes and usurps the Power of King Lords and Commons disposes of the Persons Liberties and Estates of us and our fellow-Subjects without so much as communicating their Resolutions to those that sit in the Houses And when an Order hath been reported to be confirmed by them it hath been only put to the Question no debates being suffered it having been said in the House where the Commons sit to those who have excepted against such an Order when presented That they were only to Vote not to dispute and thereupon all Argument and contradiction hath been taken away And to shew how impossible it is to contain themselves within any bond of civility and humanity when they have forfeited their Allegiance after the attempt in a most barbarous manner to murther the Queens Majesty at Her landing at Burlington by making many great shot at the house where She lodged for Her repose after a long Voyage by Sea where by God's blessing it was disappointed they impeached Her of High Treason for assisting the King Her Husband and the Kingdom in their greatest necessities All Petitions and Addresses for Peace have been with great Art and Vehemence discountenanced and suppressed whilst others for Sedition and Discord have with no less industry and passion been promoted And when the Members of the House of Commons in August last had agreed upon a long and solemn debate to joyn with the Lords in sending Propositions of Peace to His Majesty the next day printed Papers were scattered in the Streets and fix'd upon the publick places both in the City and Suburbs requiring all Persons
there shall be so much as a delay of the same He calls God and the World to witness who they are that not only hinder but reject this Kingdoms future Happiness it being so much the stranger that His Majesties coming to Westminster which was first the greatest pretence for taking up Arms should be so much as delayed much less not accepted or refused but His Majesty hopes that God will no longer suffer the malice of Wicked men to hinder the Peace of this too much afflicted Kingdom Given at Our Court at Oxford the fifteenth day of January 1645. XVIII From OXFORD Jan. 17. MDCXLV VI. For an Answer to His former Messages For the Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore to be communicated to the two Houses of Parliament at Westminster and to the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland CHARLES R. HIS Majesty thinks not fit now to answer those Aspersions which are returned as arguments for His not admittance to Westminster for a Personal Treaty because it would enforce a style not suitable to His end it being the Peace of these miserable Kingdoms yet thus much He cannot but say to those who have sent Him this Answer that if they had considered what they have done themselves in occasioning the shedding of so much innocent blood by withdrawing themselves from their Duty to Him in a time when He had granted so much to His Subjects and in violating the known Laws of the Kingdom to draw an exorbitant power to themselves over their fellow-Subjects to say no more to do as they have done they could not have given such a false character of His Majesties Actions Wherefore His Majesty must now remember them that having some hours before his receiving of their last Paper of the 13. of January sent another Message to them of the 15 wherein by divers particulars He enlargeth Himself to shew the reality of His endeavors for Peace by His desired Personal Treaty which He still conceives to be the likeliest way to attain to that blessed End He thinks fit by this Message to call for an Answer to that and indeed to all the former For certainly no rational man can think their last Paper can be any Answer to His former demands the scope of it being That because there is a War therefore there should be no Treaty for Peace And is it possible to expect that the Propositions mentioned should be the grounds of a lasting Peace when the persons that send them will not endure to hear their own King speak But whatever the success hath been of His Majesty's former Messages or how small soever His hopes are of a better considering the high strain of those who deal with His Majesty yet He will neither want Fatherly Bowels to His Subjects in general nor will He forget that God hath appointed Him for their King with whom He treats Wherefore He now demands a speedy Answer to His last and former Messages Given at Our Court at Oxford this 17 of January 1645. XIX From OXFORD Jan. 24. MDCXLV VI. For Answer to His former Message and concerning their Reasons against a Personal Treaty For the Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore to be communicated to the two Houses of Parliament at Westminster and to the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland CHARLES R. THE procuring Peace to these Kingdoms by Treaty is so much desired by His Majesty that no unjust Aspersions whatsoever or any other Discouragements shall make Him desist from doing His indeavour therein until He shall see it altogether impossible and He therefore hath thought fitting so far only to make reply to that Paper or Answer which He hath received of the 13 of this Instant January as may take away those objections which are made against His Majesty's coming to Westminster expecting still an Answer to His Messages of the fifteenth and seventeenth which He hopes by this time have begotten better thoughts and resolutions in the Members of both Houses And first therefore whereas in the said last Paper it is objected as an impediment to His Majesty's Personal Treaty that much innocent Blood hath been shed in this War by His Majesty's Commissions c. He will not now dispute it being apparent to all the World by whom this Blood hath been spilt but rather presseth that there should be no more and to that end only He hath desired this Personal Treaty as judging it the most immediate means to abolish so many horrid Confusions in all His Kingdoms And it is no Argument to say that there shall be no such Personal Treaty because there have been Wars it being a strong inducement to have such a Treaty to put an end to the War Secondly That there should be no such Personal Treaty because some of His Irish Subjects have repaired to His assistance in it seems an argument altogether as strange as the other as alwaies urging that there should be no Physick because the Party is sick And in this particular it hath been often observed unto them that those whom they call Irish who have so expressed their Loyalty to their Soveraign were indeed for the most part such English Protestants as had been formerly sent into Ireland by the two Houses impossibilitated to stay there any longer by the neglect of those that sent them thither who should there have better provided for them And for any Foreign Forces it is too apparent that their Armies have swarmed with them when His Majesty hath had very few or none And whereas for a third Impediment it is alledged that the Prince is in the head of an Army in the West and that there are divers Garrisons still kept in His Majesty's obedience and that there are Forces in Scotland it must be as much confessed as that as yet there is no Peace And therefore it is desired that by such a Personal Treaty all these impediments may be removed And it is not here amiss to put them in mind how long since His Majesty did press a disbanding of all Forces on both sides the refusing whereof hath been the cause of this objection And whereas exception is taken that there is a time limited in the Proposition for His Majesty's Personal Treaty thereupon inferring that He should again return to Hostility His Majesty protesteth that He seeks this Treaty to void future Hostility and to procure a lasting Peace and if He can meet with like inclinations to Peace in those He desires to Treat with He will bring such Affections and resolutions in Himself as shall end all these unhappy bloody Differences As for those engagements which His Majesty hath desired for His security whosoever shall call to mind the particular occasions that enforced His Majesty to leave His City of London and Westminster will judge His demand very reasonable and necessary for His Safety But He no way conceiveth how the Lord Mayor Aldermen Common-Council and Militia of London were either subject or subordinate to that
publick charge of this and that Kingdom to rob and pillage me of my Goods to chase my good Subjects and maintain my own Town of Hull against me and that by the absence of those Ships from the Irish Seas the Rebells have had opportunity to bring store of Arms Ammunition and Supplies to their succours to which we may justly impute the Calamities which have over whelmed my poor Protestant Subjects there They cry out upon a few suits of cloaths appointed as they say for Ireland which some of my Forces took but conceal that they were taken as entring into Coventry then in open Rebellion against me where I had reason to believe they would have been disposed of amongst their Soldiers who then bore Arms against me They talk of a few horses which I have made use of for my Carriages concealing that they were certified to be useless for the service of Ireland when they themselves have seised an hundred thousand pounds particularly appointed by Act of Parliament for the relief of Ireland where my Army is ready to perish for want of it and imployed it together with such part of the four hundred thousand pound Subsidie as they have received to maintain an unnatural Civil War at home Neither have they used their fellow-Subjects better than they have done me their King By their Power the Law of the Land your birth-right is trampled upon and in stead thereof they govern my People by Votes and Arbitrary Orders Such as will not submit to their unlimited power are imprisoned plundered and destroyed such as will not pay such exactions as they require toward this Rebellion are threatned to be put out of Protection as they call it of the Parliament such as conscientiously remember their Duty and Loyalty to me their Soveraign are reviled persecuted and declared Traitors such as do desire to maintain the true Protestant Religion as it is established by the Laws of the Land are traduced and called Popish and Superstitious and on the contrary such as are known Brownists Anabaptists and publick depravers of the Book of Common Prayer are countenanced and incouraged They exact and receive Tonnage and Poundage and other great duties upon Merchandises not only without Law but in the face of an Act of Parliament to the contrary past this present Parliament which puts all men into the condition of a Praemunire that shall presume so to oppress the People If you desire to know who are the Contrivers of these wicked designs you shall find some of their names in particular and their actions at large in my Declaration of the twelfth of August to which I shall refer you I wish their craft and power were not such that few of those Copies can come to the view of my good People Since that time these men so thirst after the destruction of this Kingdom that they have prevailed to make all my offers of Treaty which might bring Peace to this Kingdom and beget a good understanding between Me and my Parliament fruitless In this distress into which these men have brought Me and this Kingdom my confidence is in the Protection of Almighty God and the affections of my good People And that you may clearly see what my Resolutions are I shall cause my voluntary Protestation lately taken to be read to you And I desire that the Sheriffs of these two Counties will dispose Copies of that and what I now deliver unto you having no other way to make it publick these men having restrained the use of my Presses at London and the Universities XLVII To the Inhabitants of Shropshire at SHREWSBURY Sept. 28. MDCXLII GEntlemen It is some benefit to me from the insolencies and misfortunes which have driven Me about that they have brought Me to so good a part of my Kingdom and to so faithful a part of my People I hope neither you nor I shall repent My coming hither I will do My part that you may not and of you I was confident before I came The residence of an Army is not usually pleasant to any place and Mine may carry more fear with it since it may be thought being robbed and spoiled of all My Own and such terror used to fright and keep all men from supplying Me I must only live upon the aid and relief of My People But be not afraid I would to God my poor Subjects suffered no more by the insolence and violence of that Army raised against Me though they have made themselves wanton even with Plenty than you shall do by Mine And yet I fear I cannot prevent all Disorders I will do my best and this I will promise you No man shall be a loser by Me if I can help it I have sent hither for a Mint I will melt down all my own Plate and expose all my Land to Sale or Morgage that if it be possible I may not bring the least pressure upon you In the mean time I have summoned you hither to invite you to do that for Me and your selves for the maintenance of your Religion and the Law of the Land by which you enjoy all that you have which other men to against us Do not suffer so good a Cause to be lost for want of supplying Me with that which will be taken from you by those who pursue Me with this violence And whilst these ill men sacrifice their Mony Plate and utmost Industry to destroy the Commonwealth be you no less liberal to preserve it Assure your selves if it please God to bless Me with success I shall remember the Assistance every particular man here gives Me to his Advantage However it will hereafter how furiously soever the minds of some men are now possessed be honor and comfort to you that with some charge and trouble to your selves you did your part to support your King and preserve the Kingdom I desire Master Sheriff and the rest of the Gentlemen to distribute themselves in that method that they may best receive the expressions which you shall make of your affections the which I will have particularly represented to Me. XLVIII To the Inhabitants of Oxfordshire at OXFORD Nov. 2. MDCXLII GEntlemen Though you see My Army marching from hence I do not intend to leave you My Residence shall be so near that My Power shall have an influence upon this place of which I will besides take a particular care for your preservation Therefore fear not to express your affections to Me with that courage which becomes you I know how and by whom the Countrey hath been awed but I hope no man shall have more power to fright you from your Loyalty than I have to restore you to it and I shall guess by the evidence of this day at your natural dispositions In assisting Me you defend your selves for believe it the Sword which is now drawn against Me will destroy you if I defend you not I have and will venture My Life for you 't will be a shame for
truly My Lords and Gentlemen this alacrity of yours in providing for My Army doth please Me in no consideration so much as that it is the best way for Peace for certainly this strange arrogance of refusing to treat with you can proceed from nothing but their contempt of our Forces But it is your present Honor and will be more to posterity that God hath made you instruments to defend your Sovereign and to preserve your Country to see that Religion and Law to flourish which you have rescued from the violence of Rebellion for which I hope in time to recompense every one of you but if I shall not here is one I hope will in which He shall but perform My Commands For I have no greater sadness for those who are My ill Subjects than I have joy and comfort in your affections and fidelities And so God prosper your proceedings LII To the Lords and Commons at their Recess OXFORD April 16. MDCXLIV MY Lords and Gentlemen I am now brought to you by your selves for I should not so soon have parted with you if you had not desired it and I believe that the same zeal and affection to Me and your Country which hath brought and stai'd you here hath caused you to seek this Recess that so by distributing your selves into your several Countries we may all the better reap the fruits of our Consultations Wherefore in God's name dispose of your selves as you think fit I heartily thank you for what you have done and fully approve of what you desire I think most if not all of you are ingaged in My Service either in a Civil or Martial way To you that have charge in My Armies I recommend the diligent attendance on your Commands that so by your good example and discipline you may suppress Licence and Disorder which will discredit and may destroy the best Cause And to you who are ingaged in the Civil Affairs I must recommend these few particulars That you expedite those supplies of Monies which by your advice I have sent for whether by Subscription or Excise remembring that Monies are the Nerves of War Likewise that you use your best diligence for the pressing of men and incouragement of Voluntiers by shewing them that now the only way to preserve themselves from Slavery and their Country from Ruine is freely to ingage their persons But chiefly and with all possible care to inform all My Subjects of the barbarity and odiousness of this Rebellion how solicitous I have been for Peace and how insolently and scornfully rejected assuring them that My Arms are raised and kept only for the defence of their Religion Laws and Liberties which being once secured and vindicated I shall most chearfully lay them down I having God knows with much unwillingness taken them up Lastly assure them that these extraordinary ways which necessity hath produced and most of them not without your consent or advice for My supply shall not hereafter be brought in example to their prejudice and I shall in the mean time do My best to prevent and punish all exorbitancies and disorders To conclude My Lords and Gentlemen I do now again yet never enough thank you for your great and unanimous expressions of your affections to Me which hath laid an unexpressible obligation upon Me and be assured that there is no profession which I have made for the defence and maintenance of our Religion Laws and Liberties which I will not inviolably observe Now God who hath blessed this Meeting with an unexpected unanimity which I esteem as one not of his least Blessings will I hope bring us all safe together again the eight day of October next In the mean time I shall be ready to receive any thing from your Committees that shall be desired LIII To the Inhabitants of Somerset at KING'S-MORE July 23. MDCXLIV GEntlemen I have often desired before these Troubles to visit these Western parts that I might with joy have been an eye-witness of the blessings of Peace which you then enjoyed and have been welcom'd with the hearty and unanimous affections of My good People here But the malicious designs of the Authors of this most unnatural War have made those My intentions impossible yet My coming to you in this posture may sufficiently express what value I set upon these Associated Counties I am now come to relieve you from the violence of a Rebellious Army sent hither by those that have plunged this whole Kingdom into these desperate Distractions They have got footing in your Country and under the false pretences they carry with them wherewith they have abused too many of My People are ready to devour you and bring destruction to your Religion Property and Liberty These I am come to defend and shall refuse no danger that may conduce to your deliverance from this Slavery attempted on you by those men All that I ask of you is that you will not be wanting to your selves but will heartily joyn with Me in this good work by contributing your chearful assistance to My Army and by performing your Duty in bearing Arms with Me in this good Cause wherein whoever shall fall carrieth this comfort with him that he falleth in defence of the true Protestant Religion his King his Countrey and the Law of the Land And he that will not venture his life for these I had rather have his room than his company Upon these grounds I shall lead you on Follow Me with courage and the God of Power give us his Blessing I shall further remember you of this that if by your assistance it shall please God to inable Me to reduce this Army now in the bowels of your Country you will not only thereby free these Associated Counties from those Miseries which threaten you but it may please God in mercy so to look upon this poor Kingdom that the fruits of this Victory may be a means to restore Peace to us all that blessed Peace which I have so often and so importunately sought for from them at Westminster and which they have so scornfully rejected as if the blood of their fellow-Subjects were their delight God turn their hearts neither shall I despair of it if the success of that Army the chiefest strength on which they rely shall fail their expectation for then it may have such an influence upon them that I hope they may be prevailed with to give you leave to be happy again and which I have so often desired to have all that is in question between them and Me determined in a full and free convention of Parliament Then I shall not fear but the united power of this Kingdom will easily free us from that Northern Invasion which making use of our Divisions threatneth no less than the Conquest of this whole Nation This I assure you that no success shall make Me less zealously seek for Peace well knowing whose blood is to be spilt in this unhappy quarrel but rather I shall more
Me but this Delay I doubt not but I shall give some satisfaction to you all here and to My People after that and therefore I do require you as you will answer it at the dreadful Day of Judgment that you will consider it once again Bradshaw Sir I have received direction from the Court. KING Well Sir Bradshaw If this must be re-inforced or any thing of this nature your Answer must be the same and they will proceed to Sentence if you have nothing more to say KING I have nothing more to say but I shall desire that this may be entred what I have said Bradshaw The Court then Sir hath something to say unto you which although I know it will be very unacceptable yet notwithstanding they are willing and are resolved to discharge their Duty Then Bradshaw went on in a long Harangue endeavouring to justifie their proceedings misapplying Law and History and raking up and wresting whatsoever he thought fit for his purpose alleging the Examples of former Treasons and Rebellions both at home and abroad as authentick proofs and concluding that the King was a Tyrant Traitor Murtherer and publick Enemy to the Commonwealth of England His Majesty having with His wonted Patience heard all these Reproaches answered I would desire only one word before you give Sentence and that is That you would hear Me concerning those great Imputations that you have laid to My charge Bradshaw Sir you must give me now leave to go on for I am not far from your Sentence and your time is now past KING But I shall desire you will hear Me a few words to you for truly whatever Sentence you will put upon Me in respect of those heavy Imputations that I see by your speech you have put upon Me. Sir it is very true that Bradshaw Sir I must put you in mind truly Sir I would not willingly at this time especially interrupt you in any thing you have to say that is proper for us to admit of but Sir you have not owned us as a Court and you look upon as a sort of people met together and we know what Language we receive from your Party KING I know nothing of that Bradshaw You disavow us as a Court and therefore for you to address your self to us not to acknowledge us as a Court to judge of what you say it is not to be permitted And the truth is all along from the first time you were pleased to disavow and disown us the Court needed not to have heard you one word for unless they be acknowledged a Court and engaged it is not proper for you to speak Sir we have given you too much Liberty already and admitted of too much Delay and we may not admit of any further Were it proper for us to do we should hear you freely and we should not have declined to have heard you at large what you could have said or proved on your behalf whether for totally excusing or for in part excusing those great and hainous Charges that in whole or in part are laid upon you But Sir I shall trouble you no longer your Sins are of so large a dimension that if you do but seriously think of them they will drive you to a sad consideration and they may improve in you a sad and serious repentance And that the Court doth heartily wish that you may be so penitent for what you have done amiss that God may have mercy at least-wise upon your better part Truly Sir for the other it is our parts and duties to do that that the Law prescribes We are not here Jus dare but Jus dicere we cannot be unmindful of what the Scripture tells us For to acquit the guilty is of equal abomination as to condemn the innocent we may not acquit the guilty What sentence the Law affirms to a Traitor Tyrant a Murtherer and a publick enemy to the Countrey that Sentence you are now to hear read unto you and that is the Sentence of the Court. Make an O yes and command Silence while the Sentence is read Which done their Clerk Broughton read the Sentence drawn up in Parchment WHereas the Commons of England in Parliament had appointed them an High Court of Justice for the Trial of Charles Stuart King of England before whom he had been three times convented and at the first time a Charge of High Treason and other Crimes and Misdemeanours was read in the behalf of the Kingdom of England Here the Charge was repeated Which Charge being read unto him as aforesaid he the said Charles Stuart was required to give his Answer but he refused so to do Expressing the several passages of His refusing in the former Proceedings For all which Treasons and Crimes this Court doth adjudge That he the said Charles Stuart as a Tyrant Traitor Murtherer and a publick Enemy shall be put to death by the severing of his Head from his Body Which being read Bradshaw added This Sentence now read and published it is the Act Sentence Judgment and Resolution of the whole Court To which they all expressed their Assent by standing up as was before agreed and ordered His Majesty then said Will you hear Me a word Sir Bradshaw Sir you are not to be heard after the Sentence KING No Sir Bradshaw No Sir by your favour Sir Guard withdraw your Prisoner KING I may speak after Sentence by your favour Sir I may speak after Sentence ever By your favour hold The Sentence Sir I say Sir I do I am not suffered to speak expect what Justice other People will have The Persons that sate when Judgment was given upon the Life of their KING were these Serjeant John Bradshaw Lieutenant General Cromwell Commissary General Ireton John Lisle Esquire William Say Esquire Sir Hardresse Waller Colonel Valentine Walton Colonel Thomas Harrison Colonel Edward Whaley Colonel Thomas Pride Colonel Isaac Ewer Thomas Lord Gray of Groby Sir John Danvers Knight Sir Thomas Maleverer Baronet Sir John Bourchier Knight William Heveningham Esquire Isaac Ponnington Alderman Colonel Henry Marten Colonel William Poresoy Colonel John Berksted John Blakeston Esquire Gilbert Millington Sir William Constable Baronet Colonel Edmund Ludlow Colonel John Hutchinson Sir Michael Livesey Baronet Colonel Robert Tichburne Colonel Owen Rowe Colonel Robert Lilburne Colonel Adrian Scroope Colonel Richard Deane Colonel John Okey Colonel John Hewson Colonel William Goffe Cornelius Holland Esquire John Carew Esquire Colonel John Jones Miles Corbet Esquire Francis Allen Esquire Peregrine Pelham Esquire Colonel John More Colonel John Alured Colonel Henry Smith Humphrey Edwards Esquire Gregory Clement Esquire Thomas Wogan Esquire Sir Gregory Norton Baronet Colonel Edmund Harvey Colonel John Venne Thomas Scot. Esquire Thomas Andrewes Alderman William Cawley Esquire Antony Stapely Esquire Colonel John Downes Colonel Thomas Horton Colonel Thomas Hammond Nicholas Love Esquire Vincent Potter Augustine Garland Esquire John Dixwell Esquire Colonel George Fleetwood Simon Mayne Esquire Colonel James Temple Peter Temple Daniel Blagrave Esquire
shall not think it below Our Kingly Dignity to descend to any particular which may compose and settle the affections of Our meanest Subjects since We are so conscious to Our Self of such upright Intentions and Endeavours and only of such for which We give God thanks for the Peace and Happiness of Our Kingdom in which the Prosperity of Our Subjects must be included that We wish from Our heart that even Our most secret Thoughts were published to their view and examination Though We must confess We cannot but be very sorry in this conjuncture of time when the unhappiness of this Kingdom is so generally understood abroad there should be such a necessity of publishing so many Particulars from which We pray no Inconveniences may insue that were not intended We shall in few words pass over that part of the Narrative wherein the Misfortunes of this Kingdom from Our first entring to the Crown to the beginning of this Parliament are remembred in so sensible expressions and that other which acknowledgeth the many good Laws passed by Our Grace and Favour this Parliament for the Security of Our People of which we shall only say thus much That as We have not refused to pass any Bill presented to Us by Our Parliament for redress of those Grievances mentioned in the Remonstrance so We have not had a greater Motive for the passing those Laws then Our own resolution grounded upon Our Observation and understanding the state of Our Kingdom to have freed Our Subjects for the future from those Pressures which were grievous to them if those Laws had not been propounded which therefore We shall as inviolably maintain as We look to have Our own Rights preserved not doubting but all Our loving Subjects will look on those Remedies with that full gratitude and affection that even the memory of what they have formerly undergone by the Accidents and necessities of those times will not be unpleasant to them and possibly in a pious sense of God's blessing upon this Nation how little share soever We shall have of the acknowledgment they will confess they have enjoyed a great measure of happiness even these last sixteen years both in Peace and Plenty not only comparatively in respect of their Neighbours but even of those times which were justly accounted Fortunate The Fears and Jealousies which may make some impression in the minds of Our People We will suppose may be of two sorts either for Religion or Liberty and their Civil Interests The Fears for Religion may haply be not only as Ours here established may be invaded by the Romish party but as it is accompanied with some Ceremonies at which some tender Consciences really are or pretend to be scandalized for of any other which have been used without any legal Warrant or Injunction and already are or speedily may be abolished We shall not speak Concerning Religion as there may be any suspicion of favour or inclination to the Papists We are willing to declare to all the world That as We have been from Our Childhood brought up in and practised the Religion now established in this Kingdom so it is well known We have not contented simply with the Principles of Our Education given a good proportion of Our time and pains to the examination of the grounds of this Religion as it is different from that of Rome and are from Our Soul so fully satisfied and assured that it is the most pure and agreeable to the Sacred Word of God of any Religion now practised in the Christian world that as We believe We can maintain the same by unanswerable reasons so We hope We should readily seal to it by the effusion of Our Blood if it pleased God to call Us to that sacrifice And therefore nothing can be so acceptable unto Us as any proposition which may contribute to the advancement of it here or the propogation of it abroad being the only means to draw down a Blessing from God upon Our selves and this Nation And We have been extremely unfortunate if this profession of Ours be wanting to Our People Our constant practice in Our own Person having always been without ostentation as much to the evidence of Our Care and Duty herein as We could possibly tell how to express For differences amongst our selves for matters indifferent in their own nature concerning Religion We shall in tenderness to any number of Our loving Subjects very willingly comply with the advice of Our Parliament that some Law may be made for the exemption of Tender Consciences from punishment or prosecution for such Ceremonies and in such cases which by the judgment of most men are held to be matters indifferent and of some to be absolutely unlawful Provided that this ease be attempted and pursued with that modesty temper and submission that in the mean time the Peace and Quiet of the Kingdom be not disturbed the Decency and comeliness of Gods Service discountenanced nor the pious sober and devout actions of those Reverend Persons who were the first labourers in the blessed Reformation or of that time be scandal'd and defamed For We cannot without grief of heart and without some Tax upon Our Self and Our Ministers for the not execution of Our Laws look upon the bold Licence of some men in printing of Pamphlets in preaching and printing of Sermons so full of bitterness and malice against the present Government against the Laws established so full of Sedition against Our Self and the Peace of the Kingdom that We are many times amazed to consider by what Eyes these things are seen and by what Ears they are heard And therefore We have good cause to command as We have done and hereby do all Our Judges and Ministers of Justice Our Attorney and Sollicitor General and the rest of Our learned Counsel to proceed with all speed against such and their Abettors who either by writing or words have so boldly and maliciously violated the Laws disturbed the peace of the Commonwealth and as much as in them lies shaken the very foundation upon which that Peace and Happiness is founded and constituted And We doubt not but all Our loving Subjects will be very sensible that this busie virulent demeanour is a fit Prologue to nothing but Confusion and if not very seasonably punished and prevented will not only be a blemish to that wholsome Accommodation We intend but an unspeakable scandal and imputation even upon the Profession and Religion of this Our Kingdom of England Concerning the Civil Liberties and Interest of Our Subjects We shall need to say the less having erected so many lasting Monuments of Our Princely and Fatherly care of Our People in those many excellent Laws passed by Us this Parliament which in truth with very much content to Our self We conceive to be so large and ample that very many sober men have very little left to wish for We understood well the Right and pretences of Right We departed from in the consenting to the
and beget eternal Factions and Dissentions as destructive to publick Happiness as War both in the chosen and the Houses that chuse them and the People who chuse the Chusers since so new a Power will undoubtedly intoxicate persons who were not born to it and beget not only Divisions among them as Equals but in them contempt of Us as become an Equal to them and Insolence and Injustice towards Our People as now so much their Inferiors which will be the more grievous unto them as suffering from those who were so lately of a nearer degree to themselves and being to have redress only from those that placed them and fearing they may be inclined to preserve what they have made both out of kindness and policy since all great Changes are extremely inconvenient and almost infallibly beget yet greater Changes which beget yet greater Inconveniences since as great an one in the Church must follow this of the Kingdom since the Second Estate would in all probability follow the Fate of the Frst and by some of the same turbulent spirits Jealousies would be soon raised against them and the like Propositions for reconciliation of Differences would be then sent to them as they now have joyned to send to Us till all Power being vested in the House of Commons and their number making them incapable of transacting Affairs of State with the necessary Secrecy and Expedition those being re-trusted to some close Committee at last the Common people who in the mean time must be flattered and to whom Licence must be given in all their wilde humours how contrary soever to established Law or their own real Good discovering this Arcanum Imperii That all this was done by them but not for them grow weary of Journey-work and set up for themselves call Parity and Independence Liberty devour that Estate which had devoured the rest destroy all Rights and Proprieties all distinctions of Families and Merit and by this means this splendid and excellently distinguished form of Government end in a dark equal Chaos of Confusion and the long Line of Our many noble Ancestors in a Jack Cade or a Wat Tyler For all these Reasons to all these Demands Our Answer is Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari But this We promise that We will be as careful of preserving the Laws in what is supposed to concern wholly Our Subjects as in what most concerns Our Self For indeed We profess to believe that the preservation of every Law concerns Us those of Obedience being not secure when those of Protection are violated and We being most of any injured in the least violation of that by which We enjoy the highest Rights and greatest Benefits and are therefore obliged to defend no less by Our Interest then by Our Duty and hope that no Jealousies to the contrary shall be any longer nourished in any of Our good People by the subtle insinuations and secret practices of men who for private ends are disaffected to Our Honour and Safety and the Peace and Prosperity of Our People And to shew you that no just indignation at so reproachful offers shall make Us refuse to grant what is probable to conduce to the good of Our good People because of the ill company it comes in We will search carefully in this heap of unreasonable Demands for so much as We may complying with Our Conscience and the Duty of Our Trust assent unto and shall accordingly agree to it In pursuance of which Search in the Fourth Proposition under a Demand which would take from Us that Trust which God Nature and the Laws of the Land have placed in Us and of which none of you could endure to be deprived We find something to which We give this Answer That We have committed the principal places about Our Children to persons of Quality Integrity and Piety with special regard that their tender years might be so seasoned with the Principles of the true Protestant Religion as by the blessing of God upon this Our Care this whole Kingdom may in due time reap the fruit thereof And as We have likewise been very careful in the choice of Servants about them that none of them may be such as by ill Principles or by ill Examples to cross Our endeavours for their Pious and Vertuous Education so if there shall be found for all Our care to prevent it any person about Our Children or about Us which is more then you ask against whom both Houses shall make appear to Us any just exception We shall not only remove them but thank you for the Information Only We shall expect that you shall be likewise careful that there be no under-hand dealing by any to seek faults to make room for others to Succeed in their places For the Fifth Demand As We will not suffer any to share with Us in our power of Treaties which are most improper for Parliaments and least in those Treaties in which We are nearliest concerned not only as a King but as a Father yet We do such is Our desire to give all reasonable satisfaction assure you by the word of a King that We shall never propose or entertain any Treaty whatsoever for the Marriage of any of Our Children without due regard to the true Protestant Profession the good of Our Kingdoms and the Honour of Our Family For the Sixth Demand concerning the Laws in force against Jesuits Priests and Popish Recusants We have by many of Our Messages to you by Our voluntary promise to you so solemnly made never to pardon any Popish Priest by Our strict Proclamations lately published in this point and by the Publick Examples which We have made in that case since Our Residence at York and before at London sufficiently expressed Our zeal herein Why do you then ask that in which Our own Inclination hath prevented you And if you can yet find any more effectual Course to disable them from disturbing the State or eluding the Law by trusts or otherwise We shall willingly give Our Consent to it For the Seventh concerning the Votes of popish Lords We understand that they in discretion have withdrawn themselves from the Service of the House of Peers and had done so when use was publickly made of their Names to asperse the Votes of that House which was then counted as Malignant as those who are called Our unknown and Vnsworn Counsellors are now Neither do We conceive that such a Positive Law against the Votes of any whose blood gives them that Right is so proper in regard of the Privilege of Parliament but are content that so long as they shall not be conformable to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England they shall not be admitted to sit in the House of Peers but only to give their Proxies to such Protestant Lords as they shall chuse who are to dispose of them as they themselves shall think fit without any reference at all to the giver As to the desires for a Bill for
they alledged by evil Counsellors did raise Forces and by them mastered their Adversaries in that Parliament such as it was for it was held and kept with force how good use soever hath been made of the Precedents therein they procured a special Act of Pardon for their raising of Men and that those Assemblies should not be drawn into example for the time to come And as no Man can levy War or raise Forces without the King so much less against the personal Commands of the King opposed thereunto For by the Statute of the 25. year of King Edward the Third which is but declaratory of the old Law in that point it is Treason to levy War against the King in His Realm Within the construction of which Statute it is true which was said in the late Declaration under the name of both Houses of Parliament of the 26. of May last levying War in some sense against the King's Authority though not intended against His Person is levying War against the King And therefore the raising of Forces though upon pretence of removing of some evil Counsellors from about the Queen hath been adjudged Treason in the Case of the late Earl of Essex in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in divers other Cases And We wish all Our Subjects to consider whether if Men shall be raised contrary to Our Proclamation and against Our Will it be not against Our Authority But it is as true and was never denied but in that Declaration that the raising of Forces against the King's personal Command being no Ideot nor Infant uncapable of understanding to Command being accompanied with His Presence is and is most properly levying of War against the King For if it be a sufficient pretence for raising of Men against the King's Person that it is for the defence of the King's Authority and of His Kingdom though against His express Command and Proclamation the Irish Rebels will have colour for their horrid Rebellion for they say though it be notoriously false it is for the defence of the King's Authority and of His Kingdom And Wat Tyler and Jack Cade and Kett the Tanner wanted not publick Pretences which were perhaps just causes of Complaints though not of raising of Men. And though these persons have gone about subtilly to distinguish betwixt Our Person and Our Authority as if because Our Authority may be where Our Person is not that therefore Our Person may be where Our Authority is not We require all Our good Subjects to take notice of the Law which is in print and full force That their Allegiance is due unto the natural Person of their Prince and not to His Crown or Kingdom distinct from His natural Capacity and that by the Oath of Ligeance at the Common Law which all persons above the age of twelve years are or ought to be sworn unto they are bound to be true and faithful not to the King only as King but to Our Person as King CHARLES and to bear Us truth and faith of Life and Member and earthly Honour and that they shall neither know nor hear of any ill or damage intended to Us that they shall not defend And that when in the time of King Edward the Second Hugh Spencer being discontented with the King caused a Bill to be written wherein was contained amongst other things That Homage and the Oath of Allegiance was more by reason of the King's Crown that is His Kingdom than of His Person and that seeing the King cannot be reformed by suit of Law if the King will not redress and put away that which is ill for the Common People and hurtful to the Crown that the thing ought to be put away by force and that His Lieges be bound to Govern in aid of Him and in default of Him he was condemned for it by two Parliaments and perpetually banished the Kingdom We have made mention of these Cases not so much to clear Our Right that We alone have the power of raising Forces and none of Our Subjects either in Parliament or out of Parliament against Our Will or personal Command which We think no Man that hath the least knowledge in Our Laws and is not led away by private Interests and may speak his mind freely will deny nor was ever questioned in any Parliament before this time as to let them see how dangerous the effect and consequence of raising of Forces without Us may be unto Us and to the Commonwealth under pretence of Defence of both And though We cannot doubt of the Affections of Our good Subjects considering their Interest is involved with Ours and how precious the Peace of the Kingdom is and ought to be unto them and that according to the words of the Statute of the eleventh year of King Henry the Seventh and the eighteenth Chapter by the duty of their Allegiance they are bounden to serve and assist Us at all seasons when need shall require Yet to the end that Our good Subjects may know what their Duty is and what We expect from them and that all others who through Malice or private Interests shall be transported beyond their Duties may be left without excuse We do therefore by this Our Proclamation charge and command all Our Subjects upon their Allegiance and as they tender Our Honour and Safety and the Peace and Safety of the Kingdom that they presume not to raise or levy any Horses Horsmen or Arms or any Forces whatsoever by colour of any Authority whatsoever without Our express pleasure signified under Our great Seal other than such as shall be raised levied and imprested by the Order as well of Our Self as of both Houses of Parliament according to an Act made this Sessions intituled An Act for the better raising and levying of Soldiers for the present defence of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland by Justices of Peace and otherwise in such manner as is prescribed in the said Act or Contribute or give any Assistance in Money Plate finding of Horses Horsmen or Arms or any other ways to or for any such Preparation Levie or Forces And that such of Our good Subjects who through Ignorance have been mis-led to consent or subscribe to any such Levie Contribution or Assistance forthwith upon publication of this Our Proclamation desist from continuing such their Contribution or Assistance or giving any countenance to any such Levies at their utmost perils And We do likewise streightly charge and command as well all Our Sheriffs Justices of Peace Mayors Balliffs Constables and all other Our Officers whatsoever that they use their utmost endeavours as well for publishing this Our Proclamation as for the suppressing of all Levies or Forces raised or to be raised without or against Our consent as also all other Our loving Subjects that they be attending aiding and assisting Our said Officers and Ministers therein as they and every of them will answer it at their utmost perils Given at Our Court at York
Parliament as to prevail with the major part remaining of both Houses how much soever that major part be the smaller in comparison of the whole to suffer that name whose Reverence by all means We desire to preserve to be so soyl'd as to be prefixed to a Paper of this unsufferable nature that tends not only to the Destruction of Our Person but to the Dissolution of this Government and of all Society If at least this Declaration which We rather see cause to hope it hath not have so much as been seen in the Houses and be not the single work of the same Omnipotent Committee to which is devolved the whole power of the Parliament and which as We understand is trusted without acquainting the Houses to break up any Man's House and take away the Arms and Mony intended to defend and feed him if they shall see cause to suspect that he meant to assist his Sovereign with them and may well be as fully and implicitly trusted to Declare as to Act whatsoever they please And though We doubt not but to their utmost they will continue that injury to Us and that violation of the Subjects Liberty and of publick Right to vex and imprison those who shall publish any of Our Answers to their Declarations and indeed whilst they affirm against all Truth and command against all Law it concerns them to take care that nothing be heard but what they say yet Our comfort is that Our Intentions and the Duty of Our Subjects are so well and so generally known to Our People that We cannot fear from whomsoever it come and though no Answer came out with it that either what is there said should be believed or what is there commanded should be obeyed Who knows not that Our Commissions for Horse and Foot were not granted out till not only our Prerogative but Our Propriety Our Goods Arms Towns Militia and Negative Voice were taken from Us and all the Kingdom commanded to be in Arms and invited to bring in Horse Plate and Mony to frame an Army against Our Command and Proclamation and till Horse were raised and mustered accordingly and then with no intention nor hath any Action in any of Our Ministers given the least suspicion of such an Intention by them to compel Our Subjects to submit to Our Commissions of Array or make use of them against the Parliament but to regain Hull held out in Rebellion against Us and to suppress all such as without Our Authority and against Our Commands should raise Forces in this Our Kingdom and levy War against Us under pretence of any Order or Ordinance of one or both Houses And such traitorous Assemblies and Marches have been the only lawful and necessary Occasions of our good Subjects which have not been so much as interrupted by any Troops of Ours And what is affirmed of the spoiling and killing them as they were so travelling under our Protection and according to Law is a most malicious Affirmation as well without truth as without instance invented at once to make Our Troops terrible and Us odious to Our People What care have We taken that by this means the power of the Sword should not come into the hands of Papists who have by Our Proclamation strictly charged that no Papist should presume to list himself either as Officer or Soldier in this Our Army having directed how he should be discovered if he did presume and suffer if he were discovered What care have We taken to avoid Combustion and Civil War offering to lay down Our Arms when they shall have lay'd down their in whom it was Treason to take them up and restored Us those things which could not without Treason as well as Injustice be forced away and kept from Us Our Arms Ships Town c. And when We might meet both Our Houses in a safe and secure place to debate freely of all the Differences in a Parliamentary way And by whose Influences these Propositions were rejected and whether the Proposer or Rejecters were most careful to avoid this Ruine and Desolation of the Kingdom We leave all the World to judge and whether they who divert the Men and Mony collected for the relief of Distressed Ireland to raise Forces against their Prince who asks them nothing but what is Legal nor will deny them any thing that is do not joyn with the Popish and Jesuitical Faction in the bloody Massacre of many Thousand Protestants in that miserable Kingdom We propose likewise to every Man's judgment whether the declaring those to be Traitors who execute Our Commission of Array issued in so many Kings Reigns agreed upon by Parliament and there yielded to by the King to be settled as now it is as a matter of great grace and since that time which was in the 5 Hen. IV. in no Parliament complained of whilst Our good Subjects are vexed and imprisoned not only for resisting but for humbly petitioning so as may seem but to insinuate something against their most illegal Commands concerning the Militia To which power of commanding no Title can be made by any Statute or any Precedent nor can We ever find by search nor obtain to be told what those Fundamental Laws are by which it is pretended so deep those Foundations are laid beyond all means of discovery and the declaring that those who raise Men by virtue of Our Command and Commission the only Legal way traitorously and rebelliously levy War against the King and ordaining it to be lawful for all Our Subjects by force of Arms to resist them and their Accomplices and the raising of Forces by Authority of Parliament that is by the remaining part of both Houses never in the most outragious times before attempted and commanding several persons whom they call Lieutenants to lead and giving them power to transport from one County to another the Forces of several of Our Counties against them and to kill and slay all such as by force shall oppose them Our Self not excepted commanding all Our Officers and Subjects to be assisting to them and undertaking to secure them for so doing by the Power and Authority of Parliament which is first to allow and next to command and then to pardon Treason be not to have already subverted as much as in them lies the Liberty of the Subject the Law of the Land and altered the Ancient Government of the Kingdom leaving Our Subjects without all Rule to walk by when the most clear Laws cannot direct and secure them and they see all those Ancient bounds passed over which were ever as much known to be the Duty of both Houses to observe as it was evident that there were and that it was necessary that there should be Two Houses of Parliament and at once behold the Law which is to defend and protect the Subject and Us Who are to protect and defend the Law need Defence and Protection We doubt not therefore but all Our good Subjects will come in
that no alteration could produce that Happiness they imagined and if their natures were capable of such Trusts to take some of the chief of them so near Us that they might be witnesses of Our Actions and privy to Our Counsels that either Ingenuity or Gratitude might recover them from their desperate Inclinations Hereupon because most of the Grievances of Our People were conceived to proceed from the great liberty of Our Council-board or from some Orders and Directions from them We admitted to Our Privy Council seven or eight of those Lords who were eminently in esteem with Our People for their reputation of Honour and Justice some of whom We knew to be most passionately dis-inclined to the present managery of Civil affairs and to the Government of the Church and hoped that by a free communication of their Doubts Opinions and Counsels they would have received that satisfaction that they would have been excellent Instruments of a blessed Reformation and Confirmation in Church and State Having begun with this foundation of Confidence in Our Court by electing such Persons We made the same hast to apply particular Remedies to the visible known Diseases resolving those Remedies should be proportioned to the Counsel and Desires of both Houses which We thought the surest way to win at least a major part to the confession and acknowledgment of Our Justice and Affection The Star-Chamber had in the excess of Jurisdiction or tediousness and charge of Proceedings or measure and severity of Punishment invaded the Laws of the Land and Liberty of the Subject by the exercise of an Arbitrary Power We pressed not the Reformation of this Court though erected or setled by Act of Parliament in a wise time but at the instance of both Houses consented to the Abolition of it The High Commission Court had proceded with too much strictness in many cases where the Tender Consciences of many of Our weak Subjects were concerned and had so far out-grown the power of the Law that it would not be limited and guided by it but censured fined and imprisoned Our People for matters unpunishable by the Law We pressed not the Review of that Statute by which that Court was erected that such power might be qualified and provisions altered as had been grievous to the Subject nor desired that any other care might be taken for the upholding the Ecclesiastical Discipline than what the wisdom and piety of both Houses should think necessary but in compliance to the sufferings of Our People and the desires of both Houses consented to the Repeal of that branch of that Statute The Writs for Ship-mony whereby several summs of mony had been received from Our good Subjects for defence and safeguard of the Kingdom had lain heavy upon Our People yet were judged to be Legal Both Our Houses of Parliament declared that the grounds and reasons of that Judgment being That when the good and safety of the Kingdom in general is concerned and that the whole Kingdom is in Danger We might compel our Subjects to provide Ships Men and Victuals for the defence and safeguard of the Kingdom and that We were the sole Judge of that Danger and how the same might be prevented were contrary to and against the Laws and Statutes of this Realm the Property and Liberty of the Subject and to the Petition of Right without disputing our Right We were contented that all the proceedings in that business should be adjudged void and disannulled and the Judgments Enrolments and Entries thereupon should be vacated and cancelled in such manner as was desired Under colour of executing the Forrest-Laws and of keeping the Justice in Eyres Seat very many Persons had been grieved and vexed by Presentments Fines Judgments and Imprisonments the Meets Limits and Bounds of Forrests extended and some endeavours been made to set on foot Forrests where in truth none had been We no sooner received complaint of this but We passed an Act for the certainty of the Meets Limits and Bounds of all the Forrests in England with such further Provisions for the ease of Our Subjects as were desired at Our hands If by the negligence or wilfulness of persons trusted by Us any Grievance or inconvenience had been contracted in any part of Our Kingdom which seemed not to have so general an influence upon the whole upon the first clear Information We did Our part for the easing of them and therefore We passed for the benefit of Our good Subjects of Devon and Cornwall an Act against divers Incroachments and Oppressions in the Stannary-Courts And We were so confident this way to win the Hearts and Affections of all Our good Subjects and that both Our Houses of Parliament would at last find a time to give too that We made their Asking the only Rule to Our Grants and parted with any thing they desired Us to relinquish So in the Preamble to the Bill of Tonnage and Poundage We parted with Our Title of Imposing a Power adjudged good and exercised by Our Ancestors and though disputed never resolved against by Judgment in Parliament So in the Act for regulating the Office of Clark of the Marker because the undue execution thereof had been grievous to many of Our loving Subjects We consented that no Clark of the Market of Our House shall hereafter execute His Office in any part of Our Kingdom but only within the verge of Our Court and granted the Execution of that Office to the Mayors and Bayliffs of Towns Corporate and to the Lords of Liberties and Franchises and to their Deputies So because about the beginning of Our Reign several Writs had issued out of Our Court of Chancery in the business of Knighthood and been transmitted with their Returns into Our Court of Exchequer where the proceedings were not fit and warrantable We were contented by the Act for the prevention of vexatious proceedings touching the Order of Knighthood absolutely to part with and discharge a Right and Duty as unquestionably due to Us by the Law as any Service We can challenge So which is the highest instance of Trust that ever King gave His Subjects upon Information that Credit could not be obtained for so much Mony as was requisite for the relief of Our Army and People in the Northern parts for preventing the imminent Danger the Kingdom was in and for supply of Our present and urgent Occasions for fear the Parliament might be dissolved before Justice should be done upon Delinquents publick Grievances be redressed a firm Peace between the two Nations of England and Scotland concluded and before provision should be made for the repayment of such Monies as should be so raised though We knew what power We parted from and trusted Our Houses with by so doing and what might be the Consequence of such a Trust if unfaithfully managed We neglected all such suspicions which all Men now see deserved not to be slighted and We willingly and immediately passed that Act for the continuance of this
Witnesses cross-examined though they attended above twelve months to do it and if some men had not believed that their general and violent expressions affirming this to be a Plot equal to that of the Gun-powder-Treason would sooner be believed if it were not publickly discussed but left to every mans fancy to heighten according to his own Inclinations and had not feared that if the whole Examinations taken and not such only as they pleased to select had come to light it would have appeared by the Examination of Master Goring purposely supprest with what intention that mention of bringing up the Army was made with what earnestness it was opposed and with what suddenness it was deserted and many extenuations of and many other contradictions to what is now published would have appeared and this impossible Stratagem with which they have so much disturbed Our Subjects and reproached Us could never have been made so much use of After all this readiness in Us to do whatsoever they desired of Us and patience in suffering them to do whatsoever they pleased to Us We gave them warning that if there were any more good Bills which they desired might pass for the benefit of Our Subjects We wished they might be made ready against such a time when We resolved according to Our Promise to Our Scots Subjects with which they were well acquainted to repair into Our Kingdom of Scotland to settle the unhappy Differences there Upon this We were earnestly desired by both Our Houses of Parliament to deferr Our Journey thither as well upon pretence of the Danger if both Armies were not first disbanded as that they had many good Laws in readiness for the settling the Differences here We were by their entreaty perswaded to deferr Our Journey to a day agreed on by themselves assuring Our Self that they would think themselves obliged against that time not only to disband Our Armies but so to prepare and digest the business of Parliament that We might have made a Session before Our going But that Malignant Faction was so prevalent that the debate of the Bishops Bill took up most of their time so that neither any care was taken for the disbanding the Army nor any thing done that had any reference to the publick benefit and when the time of Our stay was expired and even the day come themselves had appointed a new Address was made unto Us for a longer stay of fourteen days because the Treaty was not concluded nor the Armies disbanded which was the main ground of Our deferring it before This Suit which was the first We denied them We could not grant there being that necessity with reference to Our Promise and to the expectation of Our Subjects of Scotland that it was not in Our power to satisfie them as We informed both Houses Our self at a Conference and according to that necessity We undertook that Journey not doubting but that when We should have dispatched the Affairs of that Kingdom which We hoped speedily to do and both Our Houses of Parliament should have refreshed themselves in the Visitation of those for whom they had so well provided by Our Favour We should meet again with mutual Confidence one in another and that it would be Our turn then to receive such Testimonies of that Confidence and Affection as We had deserved But the mischievous and indefatigable industry of that Malignant party which had before Our going interrupted that Correspondence which We deserved from Our People had with no less Malice provided for Our reception at Our Return instead of reducing business to that head that the Distractions of the Kingdom might be composed by the due observation and execution of the Laws We found things far more out of order than We left them and Our good Subjects more puzzled to know their Duties Orders had been made in the House of Commons and published in derogation of the Book of Common-Prayer and for suspension of those Laws in force which concerned the Government of the Church and though another Order of the Lords was likewise published according to Law for the due observation of the Laws established and for suppressing those Disorders which were every day breaking out by the faction of mean loose persons against the Divine Service appointed by Law the House of Commons took upon them publickly to declare against that Order because it was only made with the consent of eleven Lords and that nine other Lords did then dissent from it whereas in truth the said Order was made in a full House in January before and only Ordered then by that difference of number to be printed after the House of Commons had made in a very thin House and after it had been rejected by Vote that illegal Order for such alteration in the Church and if in truth it had been then made and but by the odds of two Voices being in pursuance of the Law all men will think it of much more validity than any Order of the House of Commons against the Law which in truth hath no Authority to make any Orders in business of that nature And therefore the publishing of that Order and Declaration of the ninth of September must be confessed by all men to be such a breach and violation of the Privilege of the Peers House besides the Affront offered to Us and injury to Our good Subjects and to the Law by it that before this Parliament was never heard of and was an apparent evidence that they meant the whole Managery of the Kingdom and the Legislative power should be undertaken by the House of Commons without the Consent either of Us or Our Nobility Yet the Execution of this Order was with great Diligence and Animosity pressed upon Our good Subjects and many troubled and imprisoned for not submitting thereunto When they had made this breach upon the Ecclesiastical State they took care under pretence of encouragement of Preaching to erect Lectures in several Parishes and to commend such Lecturers as best suited with their Designs men of no learning no Conscience but furious Promoters of the most dangerous Innovations which were ever induced into any State many of them having taken no Orders yet recommended by Members of either House to Parishes as at Leusham in Kent and many other places And when Mechanick persons have been brought before them for Preaching in Churches and confessed the same the power of these Grand Reformers hath been so great that they have been dismissed without Punishment hardly with Reprehension All persons of Learning and eminency in Preaching of sober and vertuous Conversations and great Examples in their Lives even such as amongst these Men had been of greatest estimation and suffered somewhat for them were discountenanced and such Men principally cherished who boldly and seditiously preached against the Government of the Church against the Book of Common-Prayer against Our Kingly lawful Power and against Our Person many of which were commended to if not imposed upon
satisfie their own private Ends and Ambition for themselves know what overtures have been made by them and with what importunity for Offices and Preferments what great Services should have been done for Us and what other undertakings were even to have saved the Life of the Earl of Strafford if We would confer such Offices upon them We were sure We could make such particular proofs against them of a solemn Combination entred into by them for altering the Government of the Church and State of their designing Offices to themselves and other Men of their solliciting and drawing down the Tumults to Westminster and of their bidding the People in the height of their rage and fury to go to White-Hall of their scornful and odious mention of Our Person and their design of getting Our Son the Prince into their hands of their treating with Foreign Power to assist them if they should fail in their enterprises Yet we saw too that their Interest and reputation was so great with many of both Houses of Parliament their Power so absolute with a multitude of Brownists Anabaptists and other Sectaries about London who were ready to appear in a body at their command that it would be a hard matter to proceed against them In this streight We resolved to do Our part in both to give Our People a clear satisfaction of Our upright Intentions to the publick whereby they should find their Happiness did not at all depend on such Instruments and to proceed against the Persons of the other in a legal way that all the world might see what Ambition Malice and Sedition had been had under the Vizour of Conscience and Religion Hereupon We prepared an Answer to the Remonstrance the House of Commons had before published to the People of the State of the Kingdom wherein without taking notice of the uncomely Language in and the Circumstances of that Remonstrance We declared with as gracious and full Expressions as We could make Our earnest Resolutions for the maintenance of the true Protestant Religion the Liberty and Property of the Subject and the Law of the Land and made no less gracious offers to consent to any Act that should be offered for the ease of tender Consciences in matters indifferent and very earnestly desired that the same might be provided and whatever else should be thought necessary for the Peace and Security of Our People And then that We might likewise manifest the Actions of that Malignant Party which had done so much mischief and intended so much more We resolved to accuse the Lord Kimbolton Master Hollis Master Pym Master Hampden and Master Stroud who had so maliciously contrived the Ruine of Our Self and the established Government of this Church and Kingdom and Sir Arthur Hesilrigge who had been made their Instrument to obey and execute their bold and wild designs of High Treason as We had great reason to do hoping that their Duty due to Us and the Obligations We had put upon Our People this Parliament would never suffer the Interest and reputation of these Men to be laid in the scale and to over-weigh Our Regal Authority and the Law of the Land but that We should have found a way open to a fair and Legal Trial of them which was all We desired How our proceeding was in that business and Our managery of it We have truly and at large set forth in Our Answer to the Declaration of both Houses of the nineteenth of May That what We did first in acquainting the House of Commons with Our Accusation by Our Serjeant at Arms was in Correspondence and out of regard to that House that We might rather have them delivered to the hands of Justice by them than apprehend them by an ordinary Minister of Justice which We were and are assured whatever Doctrine is preached to the contrary We might well have done in the case of Treason otherwise that Maxime in the Law acknowledged in a Petition of both Houses to Us in the beginning of Our Reign in the Case of the Earl of Arundel That in case of Treason Felony and breach of Peace Priviledge of Parliament doth not extend is of no signification The words are They find it an undoubted Right and constant Priviledge of Parliament That no Member of Parliament sitting the Parliament or within the usual times of Priviledge of Parliament is to be imprisoned or restrained without Sentence or Order of the House unless it be for Treason Felony or for refusing to give Sureties for the Peace In those Cases 't was then thought a Member of either House was not to be distinguished from another Subject and why We might not as well have expected that upon Our Articles not so general as a meer verbal Accusation of High Treason either House would have committed their several Members as they had done so many this Parliament and about that time Twelve together upon a confessed ground which every Man there who knew what Treason was knew that fact to be none meerly because they were accused and as the House of Peers had formerly done a Member of that House the Earl of Bristol accused in the same manner most of the good Lords being then Judges We neither could then nor can yet understand That Our own coming to the House was to prevent that shedding of blood which in all possibility was likely to follow that Order made the night before for resisting all such Officers who endeavoured upon how legal Warrant soever to arrest any Members of either House an Order much more unjustifiable by any Rule of Law and Justice by which Orders or Acts are to be examined than any thing We have done or any body by Our Authority That Our purpose was no other but to acquaint that House with the matter of Our Accusation to desire their Persons might be secured and without any thought of the least violation of their Priviledges This is that which We did Examine now their part and their progress since and then judge whose Priviledges have been invaded and with how good a mind to the Common-wealth they have proceeded We were no sooner gone but the House adjourned it self with some unusual expressions of offence and We were speedily informed that some Reports and Scandals were raised against Us in Our City of London That We had offered Violence to Our House of Commons come thither with force to murther several Members and used threatning Speeches there against Our Parliament and that this was but a Preface to an attempt We meant to make against and upon the City Whereupon We resolved the next day to go to the Guild-Hall and to shew the great Confidence We had in the affections of Our said City which We expected should have begot a proportionable Confidence from them in Us We went attended with very few of Our own Servants and then in the presence of the Lord Mayor the Aldermen and a very great assembly of the chief Citizens and others We made
taken all possible pains to destroy King and People or such whom they shall recommend to succeed that the same Faction may be carried through the whole Kingdom which these Men have raised in both Houses of Parliament that all Affairs of the Kingdom be managed not only by their Advice but their absolute Direction and Command lest any Man should think himself Our Servant that the Education and Marriage of Our Children be committed to them lest any Christian Prince should make addresses to Us in such Treaties in a word that in gratitude to their Modesty and Duty for not deposing Us We will not now depose Our Self and suffer the People and Kingdom which God and the Law hath committed to Our Government and Protection and for which We must make an account to be devoured by them Sure these Men think 't is no affront to ask any thing But can Our good Subjects be longer kept in this Trance Can the Nobility Gentry Clergy Commonalty of England sacrifice their Honour Interest Religion Liberty to Terms and the meer sound of Parliament and Privilege Can their Experience Reason and Understanding be captivated by words and assumptions contradictory to all Principles What one thing have We denied that with reference to the publick Peace and Happiness were to be bought with the loss of the meanest Subject And yet into what a Sea of blood is the rage and fury of these Men launching out to wrest that from Us which We are bound if We had a thousand lives to lose in the contention to defend Nay what one thing is there that makes life precious to good Men which We do not defend and these Men oppose and would evidently destroy What Grievance or Pressure have Our People complained of and been eased by Us whch is not now brought upon them in an unlimited degree Is the true Reformed Protestant Religion sealed by the blood of so many Reverend Martyrs and established by the Wisdom and Piety of former blessed Parliaments dear to them We must appeal to all the world being called upon by the Reproaches of these men whether Our own practice the best evidence of Religion and all the assistance and offers We can give have been wanting to the Advancement of that Religion And what can be more done by Us to satisfie and secure Our People in that point On the other side let all Our good Subjects consider and weigh what pregnant Arguments they have to fear Innovation in Religion if these desperate persons prevail when the principal Men to whose care and authority they have committed the managery of that part refuse Communion with the Church of England as much as the Papists do and have not only with that freedom they think fit to use reproached the Book of Common-Prayer and the Government of the Church in their Speeches but have published those Speeches in the view of all Men in Print that the World might see by what Measure and Rule the Reformation they so much talk of is to be made when such Petitions have been contrived by them and accepted with publick thanks which revile the Book of Common-Prayer calling it a Mass-book in scorn and contempt of the Law whilest other Petitions for the Government established by Law have been rejected discountenanced and the Petitioners punished and when two Armies were kept in the bowels of the Kingdom ten weeks at the charge of fourscore thousand pounds a Month for the countenance of a Bill to eradicate Episcopacy Root and Branch when such licence is given to Brownists Anabaptists and Sectaries and whilst Coachmen Felt-makers and such Mechanick persons are allowed and entertained to preach by those who think themselves the principal Members of either House when such barbarous Outrages in Churches and heathenish Irreverence and Uproars even in the time of Divine Service and the Administration of the blessed Sacrament are practised without control when the blessed means of advancing Religion the Preaching of the Word of God is turned into a licence of Libelling and Reviling both Church and State and venting such Seditious Positions as by the Laws of the Land are no less than Treason and scarce a Man in Reputation and Credit with these grand Reformers who is not notoriously guilty of this whilest those Learned Reverend Painful and Pious Preachers who have been and are the most eminent and able Assertors of the Protestant Religion are to the unspeakable joy of the Adversaries to Our Religion disregarded and oppressed lastly when for the settling and composing all these Distractions and Distempers instead of a free and general Synod of Grave and Learned Divines which hath been so much talked of and to whose deliberations We were and are willing to commit the Consideration of those Affairs a Conference is desired with particular Men nominated by themselves contrary to the Rights and Practice of the Church the major part of whom though We confess there are many Reverend Learned and Pious persons amongst them are not of Learning nor Understanding sutable to so great a Work or are of known avowed Disaffection to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church and of those who have preached Seditiously and Treasonably against Our Person and Authority as Doctor Downing and others Whoever from his Soul desires a true Examination and Reformation in Religion cannot expect it from the results of these Mens Counsels nor think the true service of God is like to be advanced or preserved by such practices And all sober Men must look with strange Horrour and Indignation upon the last Declaration of the Lords and Commons which after such unprecedented Outrages and Violences against Us publishes the ground of their taking up defensive Arms as they call them to be for the maintetenance of the true Religion the taking and keeping of Hull Our Navy Our Money and Goods the exercising of the Militia and all the other Injuries We complain of to be for the maintenance of Religion But whosoever believes them to be for the preservation of Our Person may believe the other too Would Men enjoy the Laws they were born to the Liberty and Property which makes the Subjection of this Nation famous and honourable with all neighbouring Kingdoms We have done Our part to make a Wall of Brass for the perpetual defence of them whilest these ill Men usurp a Power to undermine that Wall and to shake those Foundations which cannot be pulled down but to the confusion of Law Liberty Property and the very Life and Being of Our Subjects Is the Dignity Privilege and Freedom of Parliament Parliaments whose Wisdom and Gravity have prepared so many wholsome Laws and whose Freedom distinguishes the Condition of Our Subjects from those of any Monarchy in Europe precious unto Our People Where was that Freedom and that Privilege when the House of Commons presumed to make Laws without the House of Peers as they did in their Vote upon the Protestation and of the 9th of September when the House
which was so really and so much desired by His Majesty that this Proceeding seems to Him purposely by some intended to divert which it could not do that His Inclination That His Majesty had no intention to master the City by so advancing besides His Profession which how meanly soever they seem to value it He conceives a sufficient Argument especially being only opposed by suspicions and surmises may appear by His not pursuing His Victory at Brainceford but giving orders to His Army to march away to Kingston as soon as He heard that place was quitted before any notice or appearance of farther Forces from London Nor could He find a better way to satisfie them before-hand that He had no such intention but that His desire of Peace and of Propositions that might conduce to it still continued than by that Message of the twelfth For which care of His He was requited by such a reception of His Message and Messenger as was contrary at once both to Duty Civility and the very Customs and Law of War and Nations and such as theirs though after this Provocation hath not found from Him His Majesty wonders that His Souldiers should be charged with thirsting after Blood who took above five hundred Prisoners in the very heat of the Fight His Majesty having since dismissed all the common Souldiers and entertain'd such as were willing to serve Him and required only from the rest an Oath not to serve against Him And His Majesty supposes such most apt and likely to maintain their Power by Blood and Rapine who have only got it by Oppression and Injustice That His is vested in Him by the Law and by that only if the destructive Counsels of others would not hinder such a Peace in which that might once again be the Universal Rule and in which Religion and Justice can only flourish He desires to maintain it And if Peace were equally desired by them as it is by His Majesty He conceives it would have been proper to have sent Him such a Paper as should have contained just Propositions of Peace and not an unjust Accusation of His Counsels Proceedings and Person And His Majesty intends to march to such a distance from His City of London as may take away all Pretence of Apprehension from His Army that might hinder them in all security from yet preparing them to present to Him and there will be ready either to receive them or to end the Pressures and Miseries which His Subjects to His great Grief suffer through this War by a present Battel The Humble Petition of Both Houses of Parliament presented to His Majesty on the 24. of November With His Majesties Gracious Answer thereunto To the Kings most Excellent Majesty The humble Petition of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament May it please Your Majesty IT is humbly desired by both Houses of Parliament That Your Majesty will be pleased to return to Your Parliament with Your Royal not Your Martial Attendance to the end that Religion Laws and Liberties may be settled and secured by their advice finding by a late and sad accident that Your Majesty is invironed by some such Counsels as do rather perswade a desperate Division than a joyning and a good Agreement with Your Parliament and People And we shall be ready to give Your Majesty assurances of such Security as may be for Your Honour and the safety of Your Royal Person His MAJESTY's Answer to the aforesaid Petition WE expected such Propositions from you as might speedily remove and prevent the Misery and Desolation of this Kingdom and that for the effecting thereof We now residing at a convenient place not far from Our City of London Committees from both Our Houses of Parliament should attend Us for you pretended by your Message to Us at Colebrook that those were your Desires instead thereof and thereby let all the World judge of the design of that Overture We have only received your humble Petition That We would be pleased to return to Our Parliament with Our Royal not Our Martial Attendance All Our good Subjects that remember what We have so often told you and them upon this Subject and what hath since past must with Indignation look upon this Message as intended by the Contrivers thereof for a Scorn to Us and thereby designed by that Malignant party of whom We have so often complained whose Safety and Ambition is built upon the Divisions and Ruines of this Kingdom and who have too great an Influence upon your Actions for a Wall of Separation betwixt Us and Our People We have told you the Reasons why We parted from London how We were chased thence and by whom We have often complained that the greatest part of Our Peers and of the Members of Our House of Commons could not with safety to their Honours and Persons continue and Vote freely among you but by violence and cunning practices were debarred of those Priviledges which their Birth-rights and the Trust reposed in them by their Countries gave them the truth whereof may sufficiently appear by the small number of those that are with you We have offered you to meet both Our Houses in any place free and convenient for Us and them but We never could receive the least satisfaction in any of these particulars nor for those Scandalous and Seditious Pamphlets and Sermons which swarm amongst you That 's all one you tell Us it is now for Our Honour and the Safety of Our Royal Person to return to Our Parliament wherein your formerly denying Us a Negative Voice gives Us cause to believe that by giving your selves that Name without Us you intend not to acknowledge Us to be part of it The whole Kingdom knows that an Army was raised under pretence of Orders of both Houses an Usurpation never heard of before in any Age which Army hath pursued Us in Our own Kingdom gave Us Battel at Keynton and endeavoured to take away the life of Us and Our Children and yet these Rebels being newly recruited and possessed of Our City of London We are courteously invited to return to Our Parliament there that is into the Power of this Army Doth this signifie any other thing than that since the traitourous endeavours of those desperate Men could not snatch the Crown from Our Head it being defended by the Providence of God and the Affections and Loyalty of Our good Subjects We should now tamely come up and give it them and put Our Selves Our Life and the lives liberties and fortunes of all Our good Subjects into their merciful hands Well We think not fit to give any other Answer to this part of your Petition But as We impute not this Affront to both Our Houses of Parliament nor to the major part of those that are now present there but to that dangerous Party We and the whole Kingdom must cry out upon so We shall for Our good Subjects sake and out of Our most tender sense of their
let the woful experience of these last eighteen years judge where in a time of Peace and Plenty the power of issuing out Commissions to compel Loans a power in the King at His pleasure to impose a Charge upon the People to provide Ships without limitation of time or proportion a power in the Council-Board to commit Men and determine business without distinction of persons or causes the power of laying Impositions both upon Forein and Domestick Commodities and many other Acts of Oppressions was under the name and colour of a Legal Right thereunto practised and put in execution against which the Subject had no help of relief but was necessitated to submit and lie under the burthen And when at any time a Parliament was called being the only cure and remedy for these griefs it could no sooner touch upon these sores but it was dashed in pieces by a sudden Dissolution And now that a remedy is provided for that mischief by the Act for continnance of this Parliament it is attempted by the force and power of an Army to effect that which formerly could have been done with more ease and readiness And now they refer it to the censure of any honest Man whether they have not the warrant of Reason and Necessity to demand some security to enjoy that which His Majesty confesseth to be the Peoples right and in reference to that whether their Demand of having the Forts Castles and Shipping to be put into such hands as both Houses shall have cause to confide in was not both moderate and reasonable And touching their Demand and His Majesty's Answer to the Clause concerning the admission of Forces into those Forts Castles and Towns they must still submit it to all indifferent judgments how much Reason and Justice was comprehended in their Demand and how little satisfaction they received therein His Majesty answers That no Forces raised or brought in contrary to Law should be admitted which they could heartily wish heretofore had or hereafter would be really performed but they desire it may be considered what security this will be to the Kingdom to prevent the raising or bringing in of Forces contrary to law who shall be Judges of the Law when those Forces are once raised and once brought in Surely His Majesty will not acknowledge the two Houses of Parliament to be for His Majesty by several Declarations hath expresly denied them any such Power For contrary to their Declarations fortified with Law and Reason His Majesty published and affirmed the Legality of the Commission of Array and put the same in execution in most parts of the Kingdom hath authorized the Papists of the Kingdom to take Arms to oppose the Parliament and their Proceedings and to rob spoil and deprive the Protestants of this Kingdom of their Estates and lives hath by divers Proclamations and Declarations published the raising of Forces and taking up of Arms by the two Houses of Parliament and such as therein obey their Commands for their own defence and the defence of their Religion and Liberty assaulted by an Army of Papists and their adherents to be Rebellion and Treason and the taking up of Arms by the Papists and their adherents to be acts of Duty and Loyalty and all this urged and pretended to be warranted by the Law of the Land And they do not doubt but by the same Law persons legally impeached and accused in Parliament of high Treason as the Lord Digby Master Percy Master Jermyn Master Oneale and others are by the power of an Army protected from the Justice of the Parliament and yet all this while the People have not only His Majesty's Promise but His Oath to govern and protect them according to the Laws of the Land And now they appeal to the World whether such a general Answer That no Forces raised or brought in contrary to Law without admitting them so much as to declare their confidence in the persons that are to be entrusted with the Power be just or reasonable What is it otherwise in effect than to make those persons that are the Instruments to violate the Law Judges of that Law which to our sad experience is the woful and miserable present condition of this Kingdom And though by what had hitherto passed they had little cause to suspect such a happy issue to the Treaty as they heartily wished and most earnestly laboured for discovering not the least inclination of compliance to their just Demands but all or most of them answered with a Denial and that not without some sharpness and acrimony yet resolving to be wanting in nothing of their parts they enjoyned their Committee to press on the Proposition for Disbanding and humbly desire His Majesty's positive Answer thereunto which if assented unto by His Majesty would though not wholly take away the cause and perfectly cure the Distractions of this Kingdom yet at least take off the smart and pain under which both Church and State do most miserably languish and so better enable them to endure the expectation of a through Cure The Committee applied themselves to His Majesty accordingly and after some endeavour to protract the debate of this Proposition and desire that it might be deferred to the conclusion of the Treaty and that the time of the Treaty might be enlarged His Majesty being earnestly importuned to a positive and speedy Answer to the end the Kingdom might know what they might trust to His Majesty was pleased to return this Answer That as soon as His Majesty were satisfied in His first Proposition concerning His own Revenue Magazines Ships and Forts secondly as soon as all the Members of both Houses shall be restored to the same capacity of sitting and voting in Parliament as they had upon the first of January 1641. not intending to extend it to the Bishops Votes or to such in whose places upon new Writs new Elections have been made thirdly as soon as His Majesty and both Houses might be secured from such tumultuous assemblies as formerly assembled about both Houses which security His Majesty explains can be only settled by adjourning the Parliament to some place twenty miles from London His Majesty would consent that both the Armies should be disbanded and come to the Parliament Which in terms plain enough is as much as to say That until both Houses shall consent to those Demands He will not Disband His Army He will continue the War And what Reason or Justice is either in the matter or manner of those demands or what hope or expectation the People can have to see an end of their present Calamities they leave it to themselves to judge His Majesty in the beginning of the Treaty in His Answer to the Propositions of both Houses was pleased to express how unparliamentary it was by Arms to require new Laws but how to apply that to the two Houses of Parliament they must confess they are to seek they never having demanded any new Laws by Arms endeavouring
the way thereunto were not such as were reasonable and necessary for them to make and just and honourable for His Majesty to grant and whether His Majesty's Answers to these Propositions are satisfactory or correspondent to His Expression to have given up all the faculties of His Soul to an earnest endeavour of a Peace and Reconciliation with His People But they must confess that they had just cause to suspect that this would be the happy issue of the Treaty for the prevalency of the enemies thereof who like that evil Spirit do most rage when they think they must be cast out was such that they would not proceed therein one step without some attempt or provocation laid in the way to interrupt and break it off for after they had resolved to present their humble Desires and Propositions to His Majesty their Committee must not without a special safe Conduct and Protection from Him have access to Him a liberty incident to them not only as they are Members of the Parliament and employed by both Houses but as they were free-born Subjects and yet when they passed over this His Majesty refused a safe Conduct to the Lord Viscount Say and Seal being one of the Committee appointed by both Houses to be employed upon that occasion such a breach of Priviledge that they believe is not to be parallel'd by the example of former times and yet their desire was such to obtain the end they drive at that is a happy and lasting Peace that they resolved not to interrupt the Treaty for that time by insisting upon it And then they had no sooner entred upon the Treaty but a Proclamation dated at Oxon the 16 of February 1642. entituled His Majesty's Proclamation forbidding all His loving Subjects and the Counties of Kent Surrey Sussex and Hampshire to raise any Forces c. and another Proclamation dated the 8 of February forbidding the assessing and payment of all Taxes by vertue of an Ordinance of both Houses and all entring into Associations were published in His Majesty's Name containing most bitter invectives and scandals against the proceedings of both Houses by styling them and such as obeyed them Traitors and Rebels charging them under the name of Brownists Anabaptists and Atheists to endeavour to take away the Kings Life and to destroy His Posterity the Protestant Religion and the Laws of the Kingdoms with many other such scandals and aspersions and even at this time were many designs practising against the Parliament which in all probability were the grounds and reasons of His Majesty's confidence and denial of their just desire Insomuch that His Majesty in a Letter sent from Him to the Queen and read in the House of Commons did declare That He had so many fine designs laid open to Him that He knew not which first to undertake One whereof probably was the most bloody and barbarous design upon Bristol attempted though by God's infinite mercy prevented during the Treaty And whether that of Sir Hugh Cholmley's in betraying of Scarborough Castle wherewith he was entrusted by the Parliament to the Queens hands and acted likewise during the Treaty and that of Killingworth Castle which should have been likewise betrayed and a design discovered by a Letter found in the Earl of Northampton's pocket slain near Stafford written to Him from Prince Rupert were some of the other designs mentioned in His Majesty's Letter they cannot certainly affirm but conjecture And when these collateral provocations and attempts could not prevail to make them desert the Treaty then comes in His Majesty's Message of the fourth of April which they have mentioned before charging them to abuse the people with imaginary Dangers and pretended Fears to use Force and Rapines upon His good Subjects with publishing new doctrines That it is unlawful for the King to do any thing and lawful to do any thing against Him with Malice and Subtilty to abuse the People that their Pleasure is all their bounds with many other such bitter expressions that no Man could think such an Answer could be any part of a Treaty or at least to proceed from a heart that desired a happy issue thereunto Notwithstanding all which the Lords and Commons were so resolutely fixed to prosecute that Treaty and if possibly they could to bring it to a blessed and happy conclusion that they were content to lie under all these Scandals and endure all these wounds so they might make up the breaches of the Commonwealth and therefore they did forbear the returning of an Answer to any of these provocations And then when the Malignant and Popish party too-too prevalent with his Majesty perceived their constancy not to be provoked to break that Treaty of their part they found it necessary to seduce His Majesty to refuse His Consent to their most necessary and just Desires and to propound such things as could not with the peace and safety of the Church and State be yielded to and so effected their own desires All which the Lords and Commons thought it their duty to publish to the Kingdom to the end that they may see that what hath been long endeavoured by subtile and secret practices is now resolved to be effected by open Violence and Hostility that is the destruction of our Laws and the Protestant Religion and introducing of Popery and Superstition and that there is little or no hope by any endeavour of a Treaty to procure the Peace of this Church and Kingdom unless both be exposed to the will and pleasure of the Popish party until the Army and Forces now raised and continued by them be first destroyed or suppressed And therefore the Lords and Commons do hope that not only such as are already convinced of their Design and Malice but even those that by their subtile and false pretences have been ignorantly seduced to joyn with them that love their Liberty and the Protestant Religion will now with one heart and mind unite together to preserve their Religion and Liberty in the defence whereof the Lords and Commons are resolved to offer up themselves their lives and fortunes a willing Sacrifice Die Sabbati 6 May 1643. A Declaration upon the Result of the Treaty brought in with some Amendments was this day read in the House of Commons and ordered to be delivered unto the Lords at a Conference And it is further Ordered by this House That this Declaration shall be Printed and Master Glyn do take care for the Printing of it and that none shall Print or re-print it but such as Master Glyn shall appoint to the end that by his care the Records may be rightly cited and the Letters and other matters Ordered to be Printed with it be carefully Printed H. Elsinge Cler. Parliament D. Com. His MAJESTY's Declaration to all His Loving Subjects in Answer to a Declaration of the Lords and Commons upon the Proceedings of the late Treaty of Peace and several Intercepted Letters of His MAJESTY to the QUEEN and of
Son the Prince that when it was desired that a Declaration might be made against such Tumults instead of consenting thereunto the Tumults themselves were justified and when a Legal course was prescribed by the Lords and taken by the proper Ministers of Justice to suppress and prevent such Tumults and Riots that Legal course was superseded by those who were then present of the House of Commons and the Ministers of Justice punished and imprisoned for executing the Law when they remember that several Members of either House have been threatned and assaulted in those Tumults and their own Names proscribed as Persons disaffected because they freely used to speak their Consciences in both Houses that the House of Peers have been so far threatned and menaced that the Names of those have been with Threats demanded by the House of Commons at the Bar of the Lords House who refused to consent to this or that Proposition which hath been in debate before them and Tumultuous Petitions countenanced which have been presented to that same purpose that the Members of both Houses have been imprisoned and forbid to be present at those Councils for no Reason but because their Opinions have not been liked that Our Negative Voice Our greatest and most soveraign Privilege is boldly denied that a presumptuous Attempt hath been made by the major part of the remaining part of the House of Commons to make Our Great Seal of England the making of which by the express Letter of the Law is High-Treason and would subvert the ancient and fundamental Administration of Justice that at this time We and the major part of both Houses are kept by a strong and Rebellious Army from being present at that Council and that those who are present are by the same Army awed and forced to take unlawful and Treasonable Protestations to engage their Votes and that such Resolutions and Directions which concern the Property and Liberty of the Subject are transacted and concluded by a few Persons under the Name of a Close Committee consisting of the Earl of Manchester the Lord Say Master Pym Master Hampden Master Stroud Master Martin and others the whole number not exceeding seventeen Persons without reporting the same to the Houses or having the same confirmed by the Houses contrary to the express Law and Customs of Parliament All which for the matter of Fact We are ready to make proof of and desire nothing but to bring the Contrivers of all the aforesaid Mischiefs to their Tryal by Law and till that be submitted to We must pursue them by Arms or any other way in which all our good Subjects ought to give Us assistance to that purpose The imagining the Death of Us Our Royal Consort or Our Eldest Son the Levying War against Us in Our Realm or adhering to Our Enemies in Our Realm giving to them Aid or Comfort the counterfeiting Our Great Seal or Money being by the express Words of the Statute of the 25 Year of King Edward the J. Chap. 2. High Treason And how applicable this is to those who have actually born Arms against Us and to those who have consented that such Arms be born to those who have promised to live and die with the Earl of Essex and those who every day consent to some Act for the support and encrease of that Army We shall leave to all the World to judge and hope that this gracious Warning and Information now given by Us will make that impression in the Hearts of Our People that they will no longer suffer themselves to be mis-led from their Duty and Allegiance upon any pretences whatsoever And We do declare That We shall proceed with all severity against all Persons whatsoever who shall henceforward assist vote or concur in any kind toward the maintaining or countenancing such Actions and Resolutions which by the known and express Laws of the Land are High Treason and against all those who shall adhere to them who are in Rebellion against Us as against Rebels and Traitors in such manner as by the Laws and Statutes of the Realm is directed and appointed And since by the Power of Seditious Persons We and both Houses are kept from being secured against Tumultuous Assemblies and both Houses from Adjournment to some place of Safety which being done might quickly make an end of these miserable Distractions whereby We are debarred from the benefit and advice We expected from that Our great Council the Members thereof being scattered into several places therefore that the whole Kingdom may see that We are willing to receive Advice from those who are trusted by them though We cannot receive the same in the place to which they were called for the Reasons aforesaid nor intend to receive Advice from them elsewhere in the capacity of Houses of Parliament We do hereby declare that such of the Members of both Houses as well those who have been by the Faction of the Malignant Party expelled for performing their Duties to Us and into whose Rooms no Persons have been since chosen by their Countries as the rest who shall desire Our Protection shall be welcome to Us at Our City of Oxford until by the Adjournment of the Houses to some fit and free place or otherwise due course be taken for the full and free Convention in Parliament of Us and all the Members of both Houses And for their better encouragement to resort to Us We do hereby Will and Command all the Officers and Souldiers of our Army to suffer all such Persons who are Members of either House with their Attendants and Servants to come to Us to this Our City of Oxford And that none of Our good Subjects may believe that by this Our necessary Declaration against the Freedom and Liberty of that present Assembly We may have the least intention to violate or avoid any Act or Acts passed by Us for the good and benefit of Our People this Parliament we do hereby declare to all the World That We shall as We have often promised as inviolably observe all those Acts as if no such unhappy Interruption had happened of the Freedom and Liberty in that Council and desire nothing more than to have such a free Convention in Parliament that we may add such further Acts of Grace as shall be thought necessary for the Advancement of the true Protestant Religion for the maintenance of the Liberty and Property of the Subject and the preservation of the Liberty Freedom and Privileges of Parliament And that all the World may see how willing and desirous We are to forget all the Injuries and Indignities offered to Us by such who have been misled through Weakness or Fear or who have not been the principal Contrivers of the present Miseries We do offer a free and general Pardon to all the Members of either House except Robert Earl of Essex Robert Earl of Warwick Edward Earl of Manchester Henry Earl of Stamford William Viscount Say and Seal Sir John Hotham Knight
and Baronet Sir Arthur Hesilrigge Baronet Sir Henry Ludlow Sir Edward Hungerford Sir Francis Popham Knights Nathanael Fiennes John Hampden John Pym William Stroude Henry Martin and Alexander Popham Esquires Isaak Pennington Alderman of London and Captain Venne who being the principal Authors of these present Calamities have sacrificed the Peace and Prosperity of their Country to their own Pride Malice and Ambition and against whom We shall proceed as against Persons guilty of High Treason by the known Laws of the Land and shall in the proceeding be most careful to preserve all Privileges in the fullest manner that by the Law or the usage of former times is due to them if they shall within Ten days after the publishing this Our Proclamation return to their Duty and Allegiance to Us. And lastly We further enjoyn and command all Our Subjects upon their Allegiance to Us as they will answer the contrary to Almighty God and as they desire that they and their Posterity should be free from the foul Taint of High Treason and as they tender the Peace of this Kingdom that they presume not to give any Assistance to the before-mentioned Rebellious Armies in their Persons or Estates in any sort whatsoever but joyn with Us according to their Duty and the Laws of the Land to suppress this horrid Rebellion And Our Pleasure and Command is That this Our Proclamation be read in all Churches and Chapels within this Our Kingdom Given at Our Court at Oxford the twentieth Day of June in the Nineteenth Year of Our Reign God save the King A DECLARATION CONCERNING THE CESSATION IN IRELAND ALSO DECLARATIONS and PASSAGES of the PARLIAMENT at OXFORD MDCXLIII Octob. 19. The Grounds and Motives inducing His MAJESTY to agree to a Cessation of Arms for one Year with the Roman Catholicks of IRELAND AS there hath been no Argument with which the Minds and Affections of Our People have with more Subtilty and Malice been infected and corrupted by the great Authors and Contrivers of this unnatural and odious Rebellion in England than with the gross and senseless Imputations of Our neglect of Our poor Protestant Subjects in Ireland so there is no Calumny of theirs against which We can with more Confidence Clearness and Integrity justifie Our Self and all Our Actions before God and Man We will not now trouble Our Self with the remembring Our several Messages and Importunities to Our two Houses of Parliament in that business Our offer to engage Our own Royal Person in that War and the scornful rejection of that offer Our consenting to all Propositions and Acts proposed to Us for the raising of Men or providing of Money for that Service till it was evident that Men and Money being raised under pretence of quenching the Rebellion there were both imployed in kindling and maintaining the Rebellion here Our granting a Commission to Persons named by themselves for the managing the Affairs of that Kingdom according to Instructions drawn by themselves not one of which have been observed by them We shall have occasion of publishing all these particulars in a full and clear Narration to the World that all Our good Subjects may see that the same Men and only they who have brought all these Miseries and Calamities upon them here have been the Promoters if not the Contrivers of the Miseries of their Brethren in Ireland by preventing those Remedies and diverting that Assistance which being seasonably applyed might have eased that poor People of many of those Calamities they have since endured But for the present We shall only being to publish the Articles of Cessation agreed on Our behalf by the Persons trusted by Us in that Kingdom let Our good Subjects briesty know the Grounds and Circumstances of that Treaty and Conclusion About the Month of November last after We had been advertised as well by Our Council-board of that Kingdom as several Petitions and Remonstrances of all the principal Commanders and Officers of Our Army of the miserable condition of Our Forces there by the extream want of Money Victuals and Ammunition of which they were so far from being like to receive supply from Our two Houses here who had undertaken to defray those Charges that We had had too sad experience that both the Money raised by Act of Parliament and the Men raised by Our own Commission for that purpose were imployed against Us in that Rebellious Army which not long before had given Us Battle a short Petition was sent to Us by the Lords Justices and Council of that Kingdom which they had received in the name of the Roman Catholicks of Our Kingdom of Ireland directed to Us in which nothing was desired of Us but that We would appoint some Persons to hear what they could say for themselves with many expressions of Duty and Submission to Us. Shortly after in the end of that Month or beginning of December the Committee for Ireland attended Us at Oxford and set forth by their Petition That all passages by which Comfort and Life should be conveyed unto that gasping Kingdom seemed totally to be obstructed and that unless timely Relief were afforded Our Loyal Subjects there must yield their Fortunes a prey their Lives a sacrifice and their Religion a scorn to the merciless Rebels Hereupon We granted a Commission to some Persons of Honour and Trust to meet and confer with such Persons as the Rebels should imploy but without power to conclude any thing or with other Authority than only to receive such Propositions as they should make and to derive the same to Us. The meeting upon this Commission produced little effect in so much that the Lieutenant-General of Our Army there whom We trusted principally in that Commission being unsatisfied with the Cavils and Proceedings of the Rebels in February marched out with 2500. Foot and 500. Horse to force Victual and Provision from them for the subsistance of Our Army in which Expedition he performed those good services which are known to most men so that all men may observe the discourse or expectation of a Treaty caused Us not to omit any opportunity which was offered for Our advantage No success of Our Army there though God blessed it then with a very great Victory could supply those extreme wants they suffered by not having received any Relief either of Money or Victual in above four Months from hence and therefore the Lords Justices and Council by their Letter of the 16 th of March signified unto Us That the State and Army there were in very terrible want of means to support a War and that unless supplies of Money Munition Arms Cloaths and other Abiliments of War were speedily sent thither there was little hope to escape utter Destruction and Loss of the Kingdom And by their Letter of the 4 th of July after mentioning how often and how much in vain they had recommending their condition to the Two Houses they told Us plainly that unless the supplies then mentioned in their
Letters to the Speaker of the House of Commons a Copy of which was sent to Us were forthwith sent to them That Our Army would be forced through wants to disband or depart the Kingdom and that there would be nothing to be exspected there but the instant Loss of the Kingdom and the destruction of the remnant of Our good Subjects yet left there In stead of any redress or relief according to these Letters such Ships as were by the care and charity of well-affected Persons provided to transport Cloths and Victual to them were in their Voyage thither seized and taken by the Ships under the Command of the Earl of Warwick and in stead of endeavours to send more Forces thither attempts were made to draw the Scotch Forces from thence into this Kingdom So that We thought Our Self bound in Duty and Conscience since it was not in Our power otherwise to preserve that Kingdom from utter Ruine at least to admit any Expedient which with God's blessing might be a means to preserve that People and therefore We directed the Lord Marquess Ormond whom for his Courage Affection and Loyalty We had made Our Lieutenant-General of that Our Army and who having gotten so many notable Victories upon the Rebels was very well approved of by the two Houses of Parliament to agree on Our behalf to such a Cessation of Arms with the Rebels as upon his understanding and knowledge of the condition of Our affairs there should be thought reasonable This Cessation was concluded on the 15. day of September for one whole year and the Articles thereof printed at Dublin were sent to Us by Our Lords Justices and Council and arrived here on Saturday last with a Letter from them to one of Our Secretaries expressing the great sufferings of Our Army there through want of relief out of England We have thought fit with this true and plain relation to publish the said Articles according to the Copy sent Us that all Our good Subjects may see how We have proceeded herein What opinion the principal Persons as well of Our Council as the Officers of Our Army there have of this Cessation may appear by the Testimony which We have caused to be Printed after the Articles with their names who have set their hands to the same And let all Our good Subjects be assured that as We have for these Reasons and with this Caution and deliberation consented to this Preparation to Peace and to that purpose do continue Our Parliament there so We shall proceed in the accomplishing thereof with that care and circumspection that We shall not admit even Peace it self otherwise than as it may be agreeable to Conscience Honour and Justice By the Lords Justices and Council Jo. Borlase Hen. Tichborne UPON consideration had of the annexed Articles of Cessation of Arms whereby it is concluded and accorded that there be a Cessation of Arms and of all Acts of Hostility for one whole year beginning the fifteenth day of September Anno Domini one thousand six hundred forty three at the hour of twelve of the Clock of the said day We the Lords Justices and Council according to His Majesty's Letters of the one and thirtieth of July last do by this Proclamation in His Majesty's Name ratifie confirm and publish the same and do require all His Majesty's Subjects whom it may concern by Sea and Land to take notice thereof and to yield all due Obedience thereunto in all the parts thereof Given at His Majesty's Castle of Dublin the 19th day of September 1643. R. Bolton Canc. Roscomon Cha. Lambart Tho. Rotherham Tho. Lucas La. Dublin Edw. Brabazon Geo. Shurley Ormonde Ant. Midensis Gerard Lowther Fr. Willoughby Ja. Ware God Save the KING ARticles of Cessation of Arms agreed and concluded on at Singingstown in the County of Kildare the 15. day of September in the nineteenth year of His Majesty's Reign by and between James Marquess of Ormond Lieutenant-General of His Majesty's Army in the Kingdom of Ireland for and in the Name of Our Gracious Sovereign Lord CHARLES by the Grace of God King of Great Britain France and Ireland c. by virtue of His Majesty's Commission bearing date at Dublin the last of August in the said nineteenth year of His Majesty's Reign of the one part and Donnogh Viscount Muskery Sir Lucas Dillon Knight Nicholas Plunket Esquire Sir Robert Talbot Baronet Sir Richard Barnewell Baronet Torlogh O-Neal Geffry Brown Ever Mac-Gennis and John Walsh Esquires authorized by His Majesty's Roman Catholick Subjects of whose party they are and now in Arms in the said Kingdom c. to treat and conclude with the said Marquess for a Cessation of Arms by virtue of an Authority given unto them bearing date at Cashel the 7. day of September in the said nineteenth year of His Majesty's Reign of the other part FIrst It is concluded and accorded that there be a Cessation of Arms and of all Acts of Hostility between His Majesty 's said Roman Catholick Subjects who are now in Arms c. in this Kingdom and their Party and all others His Majesty's good Subjects for one whole year to begin the fifteenth day of Septemb. Anno Dom. 1643. at the hour of 12. of the clock of the said day Item It is concluded and accorded that free passage Entercourse Commerce and Traffick during the said Cessation shall be between His Majesty 's said Roman Catholick Subjects who are now in Arms c. and their Party and all others His Majesty's good Subjects and all others in League with His Majesty by Sea and Land Item It is concluded and accorded and the said Viscount Muskery and the rest of the above-named Persons do promise and undertake for and in the behalf of those for whom they are authorized to treat and conclude as aforesaid that all Ships Barques and Vessels which shall bring Provisions to any Harbour in this Kingdom in the hands or possession of such as shall obey the Articles of this Cessation from Minehead and White-haven and from all the Ports between on that side where Wales is situate so as they be Ships belonging to any of the said Ports and do not use any Acts of Hostility to any of the said Roman Catholicks who are now in Arms c. or to any of their Party or to any who shall be waged or employed unto or by them shall not be interrupted by any of their Party nor by any Ships or other Vessels of what Country or Nation soever under their Power or Command or waged employed or contracted with on their behalf or by any Forts Garrisons or forces within this Kingdom under their power in their coming to this Kingdom or returning from thence Item It is concluded and accorded and the said Lord Viscount Muskery and the rest of the above-named parties do promise and undertake for and in the behalf of those for whom they are authorized as aforesaid that all Ships Barques and Vessels which shall bring
We are to receive Advice for the Preservation of the Religion Laws and Safety of the Kingdom and as far as in Us lyes to restore it to its former Peace and Security Our chief and only end from those whom they have trusted though We cannot receive it in the place where We appointed And for the better encouragement of those Members of either House to resort to Us who may be conscious to themselves of having justly incurred Our Displeasure by submitting to or concurring in unlawful Actions and that all the World may see how willing and desirous We are to forget the Injuries and Indignities offered to Us and by an Union of English Hearts to prevent the lasting Miseries which this Foreign Invasion must bring upon this Kingdom We do offer a free and General Pardon to all the Members of either House who shall at or before the said twenty second day of January appear at Our City of Oxford and desire the same without Exceptions which considering the manifest Treasons committed against Us and the Condition We are now in improved by God's wonderful blessing to a better degree than We have enjoyed at any time since these Distractions is the greatest instance of Princely and Fatherly Care of Our People that can be expressed and which malice it self cannot suggest to proceed from any other Ground And therefore We hope and are confident that all such who upon this our gracious Invitation will not return to their Duty and Allegiance shall be no more thought Promoters of the Religion laws and liberty of the Kingdom which this way may be without doubt setled and secured but Persons engaged from the beginning out of their own Pride Malice and Ambition to bring Confusion and Desolation upon their Country and to that purpose having long since contrived the Design to invite and joyn with a Foreign Nation to ruine and extinguish their own and shall accordingly be pursued as the most desperate and malicious Enemies of the Kingdom And Our pleasure is That this Our Proclamation be read in all Churches and Chapels within this Our Kingdom and Dominion of Wales Given at Our Court at Oxford the two and twentieth day of December in the Nineteenth year of Our Reign 1643. God Save the KING MDCXLIII IV. A Letter from the Lords at Oxford and other Lords whose Names are subscribed to the Lords of the Privy-Council and the Conservators of the Peace of the Kingdom of Scotland Our very good Lords IF for no other Reason yet that Posterity may know we have done our Duties and not sate still while our Brethren of Scotland were transported with a dangerous and fatal mis-understanding that the Resolution now taken among them for an Expedition into England is agreeable to their obligation by the late Treaty and to the Wishes and Desires of this Kingdom expressed by the two Houses of Parliament we have thought it necessary to let your Lordships know That if we had dissented from that Act it could never have been made a Law And when you have examined and considered the Names of us who subscribe this Letter who we hope are too well known to your Lordships and to both Kingdoms to be suspected to want Affection to Religion or to the Laws and Liberties of our Country for the Defence and maintenance of which we shall always hold our Lives a cheap Sacrifice and when you are informed that the Earls of Arundel and Thanet and the Lords Stafford Stanhope Coventry Goring and Craven are in the parts beyond the Seas and the Earl of Chesterfield Westmorland and the Lord Mountague of Boughton under restraint at London for their Loyalty and Duty to His Majesty and the Kingdom your Lordships will easily conclude how very few now make up the Peers at Westminster there being in truth not above five and twenty Lords present or privy to those Councils or being absent consenting or concurring with them whereas the House of Peers consist of above one hundred besides Minors and Recusant Lords neither of which keep us company in this Address to your Lordships How we and the major part of the House of Commons come to be absent from thence is so notorious to all the World that we believe your Lordships cannot be strangers to it How several times during our sitting there Multitudes of the meanest sort of People with weapons not agreeing with their condition or custom in a manner very contrary and destructive to the privilege of Parliament fill'd up the way between both Houses offering Injuries both by words and actions to and laying violent hands upon several Members and crying out many Hours together against the established Laws in a most tumultuous and menacing way How no remedy would be submitted to for preventing those Tumults After which and other unlawful and unparliamentary Actions many things rejected and setled upon solemn debate in the House of Peers were again after many Threats and Menaces resumed altered and determined contrary to the Custom and Laws of Parliaments and so many of us withdrew ourselves from thence where we could not Sit Speak and Vote with Honour Freedom and Safety and are now kept from thence for our Duty and Loyalty to our Sovereign And we must therefore protest against any Invitation which hath been made to our Brethren of Scotland to enter this Kingdom with an Army the same being as much against the Desires as against the Duty of the Lords and Commons of England And we do conjure your Lordships by our common Allegiance and Subjection under one gracious Sovereign by the Amity and Affection between the two Nations by the Treaty of Pacification which by any such Act is absolutely dissolved and by all Obligations both Divine and Humane which can preserve Peace upon earth to use your utmost endeavours to prevent the effusion of so much Christian blood and the Confusion and Desolation which must follow the unjust Invasions of this Kingdom which we and we are confident all true English men must interpret as a Design of Conquest and to impose new Laws upon us And therefore your Lordships may be assured we shall not so far forget our own Interests and the Honour of our Nation as not to expose our Lives and Fortunes in the just and necessary defence of the Kingdom But if your Lordships in truth have any doubts or apprehensions that there now is or hereafter may be a purpose to infringe your Laws or Liberties from any Attempt of this Kingdom we do engage our Honours to your Lordships to be our selves most religious observers of the Act of Pacification and if the Breach and violation do not first begin within that Kingdom we are most confident you shall never have cause to complain of this And having thus far expressed Our selves to your Lordships we hope to receive such an Answer from you as may be a means to preserve a right understanding between the two Nations and lay an Obligation upon us to continue Your Lordships
most affectionate humble Servants Ed. Littleton C. S. L. Cottington D. Richmond M. Hartford M. Newcastle E. Huntington E. Bathon E. Southampton E. Dorset E. Northampton E. Devonshire E. Bristol E. Berkshire E. Cleveland E. Marlburgh E. Rivers E. Lindsey E. Dover E. Peterburgh E. Kingston E. Newport E. Portland E. Carbury V. Conway V. Falconbridge V. Wilmot V. Savile L. Mowbray and Maltravers L. Darcy and Coniers L. Wentworth L. Cromwell L. Rich. L. Paget L. Digby L. Howard of Charleton L. Deincourt L. Lovelace L. Pawlet L. Mohun L. Dunsmore L. Seymour L. Herbert L. Cobham L. Capell L. Percy L. Leigh L. Hatton L. Hopton L. Jermyn L. Loughborough L. Byron L. Widderington MDCXLIII IV. Votes of the Commons at Oxford Die Veneris Januar. 26. 1643. Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente THat all such Subjects of Scotland as have consented to the Declaration intituled the Declaration of the Kingdom of Scotland and concerning the present Expedition into England according to the Commission and Order of the Convention of Estates from their meeting at Edinburgh August 1643. have thereby denounced War against the Kingdom of England and broke the Act of Pacification Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That all such of the Subjects of Scotland as have in a Hostile manner entred into the Town of Berwick upon Twede have thereby broke the Act of Pacification Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That all His Majesty's Subjects of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales are both by their Allegiance and the Act of Pacification bound to resist and repress all such of the Subjects of Scotland as have in a Hostile manner already entred or shall hereafter enter into the Town of Barwick upon Twede or any other part of His Majesty's Realm of England or Dominion of Wales as Traytors and Enemies to the State Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That shall such of His Majesty's Subjects of the Realm of England or Dominion of Wales that shall be abetting aiding and assisting to the Subjects of Scotland in their Hostile Invasion of any part of His Majesty's Realm of England or Dominion of Wales shall be deemed and taken as Traitors and Enemies to the State Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That all His Majesty's Subjects of Scotland are bound by the Act of Pacification to resist and repress all of that Kindom that already haveraised Arms or shall rise in Arms to invade this Kingdom of England or Dominion of Wales Votes of the Commons at Oxford March 12. 1643. Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente THat the Lords and Commons now remaining at Westminster that have given their Votes or consent to the raising of Forces under the Command of the Earl of Essex or have been abetting aiding or assisting thereunto have levied and made War against the King and are therein guilty of High Treason Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That the Lords and Commons now remaining at Westminster that have given their Votes and consents for the making and using of a new Great Seal have thereby counterfeited the Kings Great Seal and therein committed High Treason Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That the said Lords and Commons now remaining at Westminster that have given their consents or have been abetting aiding or assisting to the present coming in of the Scots into England in a Warlike manner have therein committed High Treason Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That the Lords and Commons now remaining at Westminster who have committed the Crimes mentioned in the three former Votes have therein broken the Trust in them reposed by their Country and ought to be proceeded against as Traitors to the King and Kingdom Resolved upon the Question Nemine contradicente That all the Endeavours and Offers of Peace and Treaty made by His Majesty by the advice of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford have been refused and rejected by the Lords and Commons remaining at Westminster MDCXLIII IV. A Declaration of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford of their Proceedings touching a Treaty for Peace and the Refusal thereof with the several Letters and Answers that passed therein IF our most earnest Desires and Endeavours could have prevailed for a Treaty our Proceedings therein without this Declaration would have manifested to all the World the clearness of our Intentions for the restoring the Peace of this Kingdom But seeing all the means used by Us for that purpose have been rendred fruitless we hold our selves bound to let our Countries know what in discharge of our Duty to God and to them we on our parts have done since our coming to Oxford to prevent the further effusion of Christian blood and the Desolation of this Kingdom His Majesty having by His Proclamation upon occasion of the Invasion from Scotland and other weighty reasons commanded our attendance at Oxford upon the 22. of January last there to advise Him for the preservation of the Religion Laws and Safety of the Kingdom and to restore it to its former Peace and Security these Motives with the true sense of our Countries Miseries quickned our duty to give ready obedience to those His Royal Commands hoping by God's blessing to have become happy Instruments for such good Ends. And upon our coming hither we applyed our selves with all diligence to advise of such means as might most probably settle the Peace of this Kingdom the thing most desired by His Majesty and our selves And because we found many gracious offers of Treaty for Peace by His Majesty had been rejected by the Lords and Commons remaining at Westminster we deemed it fit to write in our own names and thereby make tryal whether that might produce any better effect for accomplishing our desires and our Countries Happiness And they having under pain of Death prohibited the address of any Letters or Message to Westminster but by their General and we conceiving him a Person who by reason of their trust reposed in him had a great influence into and Power over their Proceedings resolved to recommend it to his Care and to engage him in that Pious Work with our earnest desire to him to represent it to those that trusted him to prevent all exceptions and delay And thereupon the 27. of the same January dispatched a Letter away under the hands of the Prince His Highness the Duke of York and of 43. Dukes Marquesses Earls Viscounts and Barons of the House of Peers and 118. Members of the House of Commons there present many others of us by reason of distance of place sickness and imployments in His Majesty's Service and for want of timely notice of the Proclamation of Summons not being then come hither which Letter we caused to be inclosed in a Letter from the Earl of Forth the Kings General A true Copy of which Letter from us to the Earl of Essex hereafter followeth viz. My Lord HIS
know an Estate escheated to His Majesty by High Treason is as much as legally His Majesty's or his to whom His Majesty grants it as ever it was the unhappy Persons who hath so forfeited it yet we must let them know that their Condition is like to be very dangerous and that as they for resistance of whom His Majesty's Armies are raised have declared to them what they are to expect at their hands that is to be dealt with as pernicious and publick Enemies so they have reason to believe that His Majesty cannot look upon them as Persons who have performed that Duty they are obliged by their natural Allegiance and their Oaths enjoyned by Law which is to defend the King to the utmost of their Power against all Conspiracies and Attempts whatsoever which shall be made against His Majesty's Person His Crown and Dignity and to do their best endeavours to disclose and make known to Him all Treasons and Conspiracies which shall be against Him to their power to assist all Jurisdictions Privileges Preheminencies and Authorities belonging to Him or united to the Imperial Crown of this Realm The just and pious consideration and weighing of which Oath and Obligation must stir up all Men of Loyalty and Conscience to be industrious and active on His Majesty's behalf against this horrid and odious Rebellion and against the Authors and Fomenters of the same And we are confident it will not a little encrease the Indignation of all good true English-Men to find these Disturbers of their Peace who have so speciously pretended the defence of the Rights and Privileges of Parliament unite themselves with and govern their Actions by the concurrent Advice and Consent of Commissioners of another Kingdom whose business is to alter our Laws and confound our Government And if all the other particulars so plainly set down in this Declaration and so publickly known to most Men were wanting there could not be a greater instance of deserting the Dignity and Right and as much as in them lies cancelling all the Liberties and Privileges of Parliament than for these Men to break the Trust reposed in them by their Country and to submit themselves to the Advice and oblige themselves to the Consent of Agents of another Kingdom who have cast off their Allegiance and united themselves together against their natural and native King and against the Laws of both Kingdoms and have given an ample testimony to all those they have misled how far they are from submitting or intending to be governed by Parliament or by those who would yet be thought the two Houses of Parliament by joyning four Scotch-Men Agents for the Rebellious Army which hath invaded this Kingdom in equal Power and Authority with seven Lords and fourteen Commons by whose sole and uncontrolled managery and consent all business of Peace and War which doth or may concern this languishing Kingdom must be governed And yet these Men take it very heinously that His Majesty should move them in order to Peace to agree that all the Members of both Houses may securely meet in a full and free Convention of Parliament because they say from thence no other Conclusion can be made but that this present Parliament is not a full nor free Convention and that to make it such the presence of us is necessary We must appeal to all the World whether in truth that Conclusion be not very apparent from the truth of their Proceedings and even to the Consciences of these Men themselves whether whilst we were amongst them we enjoyed that Liberty and Freedom which was due to us and whether if there were no danger or breach of Duty in being willingly and constantly present where Actions of Treason are plotted and concluded we could now be with them without engaging our selves in that Covenant which as it takes away all freedom and liberty of Council so cannot be taken without the violation of our Duty and Allegiance For the deserting the great Trust reposed in us we cannot with the least colour be accused we wish it had not been or were not now broken on their parts on ours we are sure it is not except observation of our Oaths lawfully taken and enjoyned and submission to the known established Laws of the Land the preservation of which is our greatest Trust be to desert the Trust reposed in us What they have done who have broken through all these and will not at last consent to the binding up the wounds they have made we must leave to the World to judge In the mean time since 't is apparent they use their utmost endeavours to make Peace impossible and having enriched themselvâ—â— by these publick Calamities and impoverished their Country by the transportation of â—he Wealth thereof into Foreign parts have left themselves no other means to repay those vast Sums they have extorted from the People upon that they call Publick Faith â—ut out of the Estates of those who have preserved their Duty and Loyalty entire and at the price of their Religion and Laws intend to establish a Government and Empire to themselves all good Men who desire Peace will joyn with us in the suppressing these Enemies of Peace and by a resolute and unanimous Declaration of themselves rise as One Man in the assistance of His Majesty with their Persons and their Fortunes which is the only means with God's blessing to restore and preserve the Religion Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom and the very Being of Parliaments The which if these Men have any mind to do it being not so easily to be done any other way they will at last be willing that all the Members of both Houses may meet in a full and free Convention of Parliament which we have always desired and shall be always ready to do His MAJESTY's Message to both Houses April 12. 1643. Concerning Disbanding of both Armies and His MAJESTY'S Return to both Houses of Parliament TO shew to the whole World how earnestly His Majesty longs for Peace and that no success shall make Him desire the continuance of His Army to any other end or for any longer time than That and until things may be so settled as that the Law may have a full free and uninterrupted course for the defence and preservation of the Rights of His Majesty both Houses and His good Subjects 1. As soon as His Majesty is satisfied in His First Proposition concerning His own Revenue Magazines Ships and Forts in which He desires nothing but that the Just Known Legal Rights of His Majesty devolved to Him from His Progenitors and of the Persons trusted by Him which have violently been taken from both be restored unto Him and unto them unless any Just and Legal Exceptions against any of the Persons trusted by Him which are yet unknown to His Majesty can be made appear to Him 2. As soon as all the Members of both Houses shall be restored to the same capacity of Sitting and Voting in
Coronation that all Our Ecclesiasticks in their several degrees and incumbences shall preach and practise the same Wherefore We enjoyn and command all Our Ministers of State beyond the Seas as well Ambassadors as Residents Agents and Messengers and We desire all the rest of Our loving Subjects that sojourn either for curiosity or commerce in any Foreign parts to communicate uphold and assert this Our solemn and sincere Protestation when opportunity of time and place shall be offered Given in Our Vniversity and City of Oxford the 14th day of May 1644. The goodly CEDAR of Apostolick EPISCOPACY compâ—â—â—d with the moderne Shoots Slips of divided NOVELTIES in the Church before the Introduction of the Apostles Lives PAPERS AND PASSAGES CONCERNING THE TREATY OF PEACE AT UXBRIDGE MDCXLIV XLV By the King A Proclamation declaring His Majesty's Resolution for settling a speedy Peace by a good Accommodation and an Invitation to all His Loyal Subjects to joyn together for His Assistance therein AMongst the many Troubles wherewith for more than two years last past We have been involved nothing hath more afflicted Us than the real sense of Our Subjects Sufferings occasioned by this most unnatural War and the chief of Our Care hath been and by God's assistance shall still be to settle them in a happy Peace with that freedom of enjoyning the exercise of their Religion Rights and Liberties according to the Laws of this Kingdom as they or any of their Ancestors enjoyed the same in the best times of the late Queen Elizabeth or Our Royal Father And as we have always profest in the sincerity of Our Heart That no Success should ever make Us averse unto Peace so have We always when God hath blessed Us with any eminent Victory sollicited the Members of both Houses of Parliament remaining at Westminster by frequent Messages for a Treaty conducing thereunto and in particular upon Our late Victory over the Earl of Essex his Army in Cornwal which We wholly attribute to the immediate hand of God We presently dispatch'd a Message to them to desire a Treaty for Peace and Accommodation of which as likewise of that former Message for Peace which We sent them from Evesholm the fourth of July last We have yet received no Answer and therefore have resolved with Our Army to draw presently towards London and Our Southern and Eastern Counties not looking upon those parts as Enemies to Us and so to suffer by the approach of Our Army or the disorders thereof which We will use all possible means to prevent but as Our poor Subjects oppressed by Power of which We rest assured the greater part remain Loyal to Us and so deserving Our Protection And We hope that at a nearer distance of place there may be begot so right an understanding between Us and Our People that at length We may obtain a Treaty for Peace and a full free and peaceable Convention in Parliament and therein make an end of these unhappy Differences by a good Accommodation In which We hereby assure all Our People upon Our Royal Word and the Faith of a Christian which is the greatest Security We can give them that We will insist only upon the setling and continuance of the true Reformed Protestant Religion Our own undoubted known Rights the Privileges of Parliament and Our Subjects Liberty and Property according to the Laws of the Land and to have all these settled in a full and free Parliament whereby the Armies on both sides may be presently disbanded this Kingdom may be secured from the danger of a Conquest by Foreign Forces all Strangers now in Arms may return to their own Countries and Our poor Subjects be freed of those grievous burthens which by reason of the late Distractions have much against Our Will too much pressed them And to the end Our Subjects may no longer be misled be false pretences We do desire all of them as well in Our own Quarters as where the Rebels have usurped a Power to take into serious consideration the Duty and Loyalty which by the Law of God and their Oath of Allegiance they owe unto Us and more particularly that part thereof which concerns the Defence of Our Person and Assistance of Us against Rebels and such as rise in Arms against Us which they may find plainly set down in the Statute of the II. year of King Henry the Seventh Cap. 1. And We do hereby require Our Subjects within Our own Quarters through or near which We shall pass by that Duty they owe to Us and their Country that they forthwith prepare themselves with the best Arms they can get to be ready and joyn and go along with Us in this present Expedition We resolving to take special care to place them under the Command of Gentlemen of Quality of their own Countries to their good content and satisfaction And we likewise require and authorize all Our good Subjects as well the Trained Bands as others of Our City of London and Our Southern and Eastern Counties to chuse their own Commanders and Leaders amongst those Gentlemen and Citizens that are of approved Loyalty to Us and Lovers of the Peace of their Country and upon Our approach towards those parts to put themselves into Arms and march in warlike manner to assist Us in this good Work and free themselves from the Tyranny of their fellow-Subjects under which they groan commanding and authorizing them to seize such places of Strength in those Southern and Eastern Counties as the Rebels have possessed themselves of to oppose with force of Arms such Persons as shall resist them in obeying these Our Commands and to apprehend and secure the Persons of all such as shall endeavour to continue this Rebellion and to hinder the settling of the Peace of this Kingdom in a full and free Convention of Parliament the only visible means lest by blessing of God to redeem this Nation from utter Ruine wherein We will afford Our utmost Protection and Safety unto all Our Subjects that shall give Obedience to these Our Commands And as We doubt not but that all Our good Subjects will come chearfully to Our assistance for so good an end beyond which We do not require it so We trust that God who hath hitherto wonderfully preserved Us will crown this Action with happy Success for his Glory and the welfare of this poor Nation Given at Our Court at Chard the thirtieth day of September 1644. God Save the KING By the King A Proclamation for a Solemn Fast on Wednesday the Fifth of February next upon occasion of the present Treaty for Peace VVHereas Almighty God in his Justice to punish the Common and Crying Sins of the Land hath sent a Civil Sword throughout all Our Dominions which hath miserably wasted and threatens a speedy and utter Desolation to the same and now in the height of these Calamities a Treaty is assented to to begin at Vxbridge on Thursday the Thirtieth day of this instant January touching
Commissioners should have the Power but for seven years yet We should not have it after those seven years nor at any time unless they and We could agree in it so much would they have gained by this seeming compliance in point of limitation of this Power to a time though not to that time of three years which We proposed But they justifie the Reasonableness of it for whereas Our Commissioners in their Paper to which this of theirs is applied as an Answer tell them that if the time for this Power be unlimited We and Our Posterity shall for ever part with Our peculiar Regall Power of being able to resist Our Enemies or protect Our good Subjects and with that undoubted and never-denied Right of the Crown to make War and Peace or ever more to have Jurisdiction over Our own Navy and Fleet at Sea the Command thereof being also a part of this great Power to be given to these Commissioners they answer plainly They cannot admit of this peculiar Regall Power which Our Commissioners mention to reside in Vs concerning the Militia and to make Peace and War or that it is otherwise to be exercised then by Authority from Vs and both Houses of the Parliament of England and the Estates of the Parliament of Scotland respectively We approve of their ingenuity that now at the breaking off of the Treaty they tell Us in plain terms what they mean Though the Common-Law-books and Records of Parliament have mentioned that the sole Power of protecting the Subjects belongs to the King and that He alone hath Power to make Peace and War though it hath been the language of former Parliaments even of the last Parliament and at the beginning of this Parliament That the Power of Peace and War is in the King but if He will have Money from His Subjects to maintain the Wars He must have their Consents and though the universal consent and common Opinion heretofore hath gone accordingly yet they cannot admit thereof as to have been Our Right for the Answer is made to the assertion concerning Our Right And not admitting it it seems their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy to defend Our Crown and Dignity and to assist and defend all Jurisdictions Priviledges and Authorities belonging to Us oblige them not And as they do not admit this Power in Right to have been in Us alone for the time past so neither will they admit it for the time to come in Us or Our Successors to be able to resist Our Enemies or protect Our Subjects or to make Peace or War but it must be by Authority from Vs and the two Houses and the Estates of the Parliament of Scotland respectively They are to be associated in these Regal Powers and the Scepter and the Sword may in Pictures or Statues but are not in deed to be in the Kings hand alone Upon these grounds We wonder not that they would have the Navy and Fleet at Sea to be put into the hands of their Commissioners for seven years as the Militia for the Land and after the seven years to be commanded in such manner as they and We should agree and not otherwise for the say the Reasons are the same for them as for the Militia by Land It is a principal means they say of their security and We cannot find they think themselves to have any security if We and Our Successors have any Power But if We will part with Our Power wholly unto them We and Our Posterity shall be fully secured by the Affections of Our Subjects that is by the Lords and Commons now at VVestminster who in their sense represent all the People who by themselves during the Parliament or when they shall please to make any Recesses by their Commissioners during the Intervals will free Us from the burthen of the Militia and of Our Navy and so of protecting Our Subjects and will save Us the Charge of Our Navy because it is to be principally maintained by the free gift of the Subject out of Tonnage and Poundage and other Impositions upon Merchandise And having taken this care for Our Security suitable to all their Actions these three years last past they say that for security of those who have been with Vs in the War an Act of Oblivion is desired to be passed whereby all Our Subjects would have been put in one and the same condition and under the same protection with some Exceptions mentioned in the Propositions We are not willing to mention those Exceptions by which not only most of Our best Subjects who have been with Us in the War according to their Duties by express or general terms are excepted but all the Estates of some of them and a great part of the Estates of the rest of them for that very cause because they were with Us in the War are to be forfeited As for securing them by an Act of Oblivion they have less cause to desire it than they who propose it as being more secured by the Conscience of doing their Duties and the protection of the known Common Law of the Land if it might take place than any protection under the two Houses or their Commissioners for the Militia yet we were not unwilling for the security of all Our Subjects to have assented to an Act of Oblivion being willing as much as in Us lies to have made up these Breaches and buried the memory of these unhappy Divisions It was urged by Our Commissioners that according to the literal sense of the Propositions in the Powers given to the Commissioners for the Militia That Sheriffs and Justices of Peace and other legal Ministers could not raise the Posse Comitatus or Forces to suppress Riots without being liable to the interpretation of the Commissioners To this they answer That this is no part of the Militia to be exercised by the Commissioners but in executing of Justice and legal Process nor can be intended to be any disturbance but for the preservation of the Peace We shall admit that to be their meaning but it being by the Propositions made Treason in any who shall levy any Forces without Authority or consent of the Commissioners to the disturbance of the publick Peace it is apparent that the Sheriffs or Justices of Peace if they raise any Forces to suppress any tumultuous Assembly which it is possible some of the Commissioners may countenance or for executing of other legal Acts may not only be liable to the interpretation of being disturbers of the Publick Peace but feel the punishment of it And whereas they say That the Power given by the Propositions to the Commissioners for the Militia of both Kingdoms as a joynt Committee for the hearing and determining Civil Actions and Differences cannot be extended further than preservation of the Articles of the Peace to be made We conceive that a Court being thereby allowed to them for the hearing and determining of Civil matters for the preservation of
both Kingdoms and endeavours to bring over more into both of them as also Forces from Foreign parts Your Majesty being in Arms in these parts and the Prince in the head of an Army in the West divers Towns made Garrisons and kept in Hostility by Your Majesty against the Parliament of England there being also Forces in Scotland against that Parliament and Kingdom by Your Majesties Commission the War in Ireland fomented and prolonged by Your Majesty whereby the three Kingdoms are brought near to utter Ruine and Destruction we conceive that until satisfaction and security be first given to both Your Kingdoms Your Majesties coming hither cannot be convenient nor by us assented unto neither can we apprehend it a means conducing to Peace that Your Majesty should come to Your Parliament for a few days with any thoughts of leaving it especially with intentions of returning to Hostility against it And we do observe That Your Majesty desires the Ingagement not only of Your Parliaments but of the Lord Mayor Aldermen Common-Councel and Militia of the City of London the chief Commanders of Sir Thomas Fairfax's Army and those of the Scots Army which is against the Priviledges and Honour of the Parliaments those being joyned with them who are subject and subordinate to their Authority That which Your Majesty against the Freedom of the Parliaments inforces in both Your Letters with many earnest expressions as if in no other way than that propounded by Your Majesty the Peace of Your Kingdoms could be established Your Majesty may please to remember that in our last Letter we did declare that Propositions from both Kingdoms were speedily to be sent to Your Majesty which we conceive to be the only way for the attaining a happy and well-grounded Peace and Your Majesties Assent unto those Propositions will be an effectual means for giving satisfaction and security to Your Kingdoms will assure a firm Union between the two Kingdoms as much desired by each for other as for themselves and settle Religion and secure the Peace of the Kingdom of Scotland whereof neither is so much as mentioned in Your Majesties Letter And in proceeding according to these just and necessary grounds for the putting an end to the bleeding Calamities of these Nations Your Majesty may have the glory to be a Principal Instrument in so happy a Work and we however mis-interpreted shall approve our selves to God and the World to be real and sincere in seeking a safe and well-grounded Peace Westminster 13. Jan. 1645. Grey of Wark Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore VVilliam Lenthal Speaker of the House of Commons Signed in the Name and by warrant of the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland Balmerino His MAJESTIES Reply to the Answer of both Houses from Oxford Jan. 17. 1645-46 For the Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore to be communicated to the two Houses of Parliament at Westminster and the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland CHALLES R. HIS Majesty thinks not fit now to answer those Aspersions which are returned as Arguments for his not admittance to VVestminster for a Personal Treaty because it would inforce a Style not suitable to his End it being the Peace of these miserable Kingdoms yet thus much he cannot but say to those who have sent him this Answer That if they had considered what they had done themselves in occasioning the shedding of so much innocent Blood by withdrawing themselves from their Duty to him in a time when he had granted so much to his Subjects and in violating the known Laws of the Kingdom to draw an exorbitant Power to themselves over their fellow-Subjects to say no more to do as they have done they could not have given such a false Character of his Majesties Actions Wherefore his Majesty must now remember them that having some hours before his receiving of their last Paper of the 13. of Jan. sent another Message to them of the fifteenth wherein by divers particulars He inlargeth himself to shew the reality of his endeavours for Peace by his desired Personal Treaty which he still conceives to be the likeliest way to attain to that blessed End he thinks fit by this Message to call for an Answer to that and indeed to all the former For certainly no rational man can think their last Paper can be any Answer to his former Demands the scope of it being that because there is a War therefore there should be no Treaty for Peace And is it possible to expect that the Propositions mentioned should be the grounds of a lasting Peace when the Persons that send them will not endure to hear their own King speak But whatever the success hath been of his Majesties former Messages or how small soever his hopes are of a better considering the high strain of those who deal with his Majesty yet he will neither want Fatherly bowels to his Subjects in general nor will he forget that God hath appointed him for their King with whom he Treats Wherefore he now demands a speedy Answer to his last and former Messages Given at Our Court at Oxon this 17. of Jan. 1645. His MAJESTIES further Reply to the said Answer of both Houses Jan. 24. To the Speaker of the House of Peers pro tempore to be communicated to the two Houses of Parliament at Westminster and to the Commissioners of the Parliament of Scotland CHARLES R. THE procuring Peace to these Kingdoms by Treaty is so much desired by his Majesty that no unjust Aspersions whatsoever or any other Discouragements shall make him desist from doing his endeavour therein untill he shall see it altogether impossible and therefore hath thought fitting so far only to make Reply to that Paper or Answer which he hath received of the 13. of this instant Jan. as may take away those Objections which are made against his Majesties coming to VVestminster expecting still an Answer to his Messages of the 15. and 17. which he hopes by this time have begotten better thoughts and resolutions in the Members of both Houses And first therefore Whereas in the said last Paper it is objected as an impediment to his Majesties Personal Treaty that much innocent Blood hath been shed in this War by his Majesties Commissions c. He will not now dispute it being apparent to all the World by whom this Blood hath been spilt but rather presseth that there should be no more and to that end only he hath desired this Personal Treaty as judging it the most immediate means to abolish so many horrid Confusions in all his Kingdoms And it is no Argument to say That there shall be no such Personal Treaty because there have been Wars it being a strong inducement to have such a Treaty to put an end to the War Secondly That there should be no such Personal Treaty because some of his Irish Subjects have repaired to his Assistance in it seems an Argument altogether as strange as the other as
think in my Conscience to be against thy Glory the good of my Subjects and the discharge of my own duty to Reason and Justice Make Me willing to suffer the greatest Indignities and Injuries they press upon Me rather than commit the least sin against my Conscience Let the just Liberties of my People be as well they may preserved in fair and equal ways without the slavery of my Soul Thou that hast invested Me by thy Favours in the power of a Christian King suffer Me not to subject my Reason to other mens Passions and Designs which to Me seem unreasonable unjust and irreligious So shall I serve Thee in the truth and uprightness of my Heart tho I cannot satisfie these men Though I be driven from among them yet give Me grace to walk always uprightly before Thee Lead Me in the way of Truth and Justice for these I know will bring Me at last to Peace and Happiness with Thee though for these I have much trouble among men This I beg of Thee for my Saviours sake VII Vpon the QUEENS Departure and Absence out of ENGLAND ALthough I have much cause to be troubled at my Wifes departure from Me and out of my Dominions yet not her absence so much as the scandal of that Necessity which drives Her away doth afflict Me That She should be compelled by My own Subjects and those pretending to be Protestants to withdraw for her Safety This being the first example of any Protestant Subjects that have taken up Arms against their King a Protestant For I look upon this now done in England as another Act of the same Tragedy which was lately begun in Scotland the brands of that fire being ill quenched have kindled the like flames here I fear such motions so little to the adorning of the Protestant profession may occasion a further alienation of Mind and divorce of Affections in Her from that Religion which is the only thing wherein We differ Which yet God can and I pray he would in time take away and not suffer these practices to be any obstruction to her Judgment since it is the motion of those men for the most part who are yet to seek and settle their Religion for Doctrine Government and good Manners and so not to be imputed to the true English Protestants who continue firm to their former setled Principles and Laws I am sorry my relation to so deserving a Lady should be any occasion of her Danger and Affliction whose Merits would have served her for a protection among the savage Indians while their Rudeness and Barbarity knows not so perfectly to hate all Virtues as some mens Subtilty doth among whom I yet think few are so malicious as to hate Her for Her self The fault is That She is my Wife All Justice then as well as Affection commands Me to study Her Security who is only in danger for My sake I am content to be tossed weather-beaten and shipwrackt so as She may be in safe Harbor This comfort I shall enjoy by Her Safety in the midst of My Personal Dangers that I can perish but half if She be preserved In whose Memory and hopeful Posterity I may yet survive the Malice of My Enemies altho they should be satiated with my Blood I must leave her and Them to the Love and Loyalty of my good Subjects and to his Protection who is able to punish the Faults of Princes and no less severely to revenge the Injuries done to Them by those who in all duty and Allegiance ought to have made good that Safety which the Laws chiefly provide for Princes But common Civility is in vain expected from those that dispute their Loyalty Nor can it be safe for any relation to a King to tarry among them who are shaking hands with their Allegiance under pretence of laying faster hold on their Religion 'T is pity so noble and peaceful a Soul should see much more suffer the Rudeness of those who must make up their want of Justice with Inhumanity and Impudence Her sympathy with Me in my Afflictions will make her Virtues shine with greater lustre as Stars in the darkest nights and assure the envious world that She loves Me not my Fortunes Neither of Us but can easily forgive since We do not much blame the unkindness of the Generality and Vulgar for we see God is pleased to try both our Patience by the most self-punishing sin the Ingratitude of those who having eaten of our Bread and being enriched with our Bounty have scornfully lift up themselves against Us and those of our own Houshold are become our Enemies I pray God lay not their sin to their charge who think to fatisfie all obligations to duty by their Corban of Religion and can less endure to see than to sin against their Benefactors as well as their Soveraigns But even that Policy of my Enemies is so far venial as it was necessary to their designs by scandalous Articles and all irreverent demeanor to seek to drive Her out of my Kingdoms lest by the influence of her Example eminent for Love as a Wife and Loyalty as a Subject She should have converted to or retained in their Love and Loyalty all those whom they had a purpose to pervert The less I may be blest with her company the more I will retire to God and my own Heart whence no Malice can banish Her My Enemies may envy but they can never deprive Me of the enjoyment of her Virtues while I enjoy My self Thou O Lord whose Justice at present sees fit to scatter Vs let thy Mercy in the due time re-unite Vs on Earth if it be thy Will however bring Vs both at last to thy Heavenly Kingdom Preserve Vs from the hands of our despiteful and deadly Enemies and prepare Vs by our Sufferings for thy presence Tho We differ in some things as to Religion which is my greatest temporal Infelicity yet Lord give and accept the sincerity of our Affections which desire to seek to find to embrace every Truth of thine Let both our hearts agree in the Love of thy self and Christ crucified for us Teach Vs both what Thou wouldst have Vs to know in order to thy Glory our publick relations and our Souls eternal good and make Vs careful to do what good We know Let neither Ignorance of what is necessary to be known nor Vnbelief or Disobedience to what We know be our misery or our wilful default Let not this great Scandal of those my Subjects which profess the same Religion with Me be any hindrance to her love of any Truth thou wouldst have Her to learn nor any hardning of Her in any Error Thou wouldst have cleared to Her Let mine and other mens Constancy be an Antidote against the poyson of their Example Let the truth of that Religion I profess be represented to Her Judgment with all the beauties of Humility Loyalty Charity and Peaceableness which are the proper fruits and ornaments of it not
Thou by my own Subjects strip Me of my strength and eclipse my glory But shew thy self O my hope and only refuge Let not mine Enemies say There is no help for him in his God Hold up my goings in thy paths that my footsteps slip not Keep Me as the apple of thine eye hide Me under the shadow of thy wings Shew thy marvellous loving-kindness O Thou that savest by thy right hand them that put their trust in Thee from those that rise up against them From the wicked that oppress Me from my deadly enemies that compass Me about Shew Me the path of life In thy presence is fulness of joy at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore XI Vpon the Nineteen Propositions first sent to the KING and more afterwards ALtho there be many things they demand yet if these be all I am glad to see at what price they set My own safety and My Peoples peace which I cannot think I buy at too dear a rate save only the parting with My Conscience and Honour If nothing else will satisfie I must chuse rather to be as miserable and inglorious as My Enemies can make or wish Me. Some things here propounded to Me have been offered by Me others are easily granted The rest I think ought not to be obtruded upon Me with the point of the Sword nor urged with the injuries of a War when I have already declared that I cannot yield to them without violating my Conscience 'T is strange there can be no method of Peace but by making War upon my Soul Here are many things required of Me but I see nothing offer'd to Me by the way of grateful exchange of Honour or any requital for those Favours I have or can yet grant them This Honour they do Me to put Me on the giving part which is more Princely and Divine They cannot ask more than I can give may I but reserve to My self the incommunicable Jewel of my Conscience and not be forced to part with that whose loss nothing can repair or requite Some things which they are pleased to propound seem unreasonable to Me and while I have any mastery of my Reason how can they think I can consent to them who know they are such as are inconsistent with being either a King or a good Christian My yielding so much as I have already makes some men confident I will deny nothing The love I have of my Peoples Peace hath indeed great influence upon Me but the love of Truth and inward Peace hath more Should I grant some things they require I should not so much weaken my outward state of a King as wound that inward quiet of my Conscience which ought to be is and ever shall be by Gods grace dearer to Me than my Kingdoms Some things which a King might approve yet in Honour and Policy are at some time to be denied to some men lest he should seem not to dare to deny any thing and give too much incouragement to unreasonable demands and importunities But to bind My self to a general and implicit consent to whatever they shall desire or propound for such is one of their Propositions were such a latitude of blind obedience as never was expected from any Freeman nor fit to be required of any man much less of a King by his own Subjects any of whom he may possibly exceed as much in Wisdom as he doth in Place and Power This were as if Sampson should have consented not only to bind his own hands and cut off his hair but to put out his own eyes that the Philistines might with the more safety mock and abuse him which they chose rather to do than quite to destroy him when he was become so tame an object and fit occasion for their sport and scorn Certainly to exclude all power of denial seems an arrogancy least of all becoming those who pretend to make their Addresses in an humble and loyal way of petitioning who by that sufficiently confess their own inferiority which obligeth them to rest if not satisfied yet quietted with such an answer as the will and reason of their Superior thinks fit to give who is acknowledged to have a freedom and power of Reason to consent or dissent else it were very foolish and absurd to ask what another having not liberty to deny neither hath power to grant But if this be My right belonging to Me in Reason as a Man and in Honour as a Soveraign King as undoubtedly it doth how can it be other than extreme injury to confine my Reason to a necessity of granting all they have a mind to ask whose minds may be as differing from Mine both in Reason and Honour as their aims my be and their qualities are which last God and the Laws have sufficiently distinguisht making Me their Soveraign and them My Subjects whose Propositions may soon prove violent Oppositions if once they gain to be necessary Impositions upon the Regal Authority since no man seeks to limit and confine his King in Reason who hath not a secret aim to share with him or usurp upon him in Power and Dominion But they would have Me trust to their moderation and abandon Mine own discretion that so I might verifie what representations some have made of Me to the world that I am fitter to be their Pupil than their Prince Truly I am not so confident of My own sufficiency as not willingly to admit the Counsel of others But yet I am not so diffident of my self as bruitishly to submit to any mens dictates and at once to betray the Soveraignty of Reason in My Soul and the Majesty of my own Crown to any of My Subjects Least of all have I any ground of credulity to induce Me fully to submit to all the desires of those men who will not admit or do refuse and neglect to vindicate the freedom of their own and others sitting and voting in Parliament Besides all men that know them know this how young Statesmen the most part of these propounders are so that till experience of one seven years hath shewed Me how well they can Govern Themselves and so much Power as is wrested from Me I should be very foolish indeed and unfaithful in my Trust to put the reins of both Reason and Government wholly out of my own into their hands whose driving is already too much like Jehu's and whose forwardness to ascend the throne of Supremacy portends more of Phaeton than of Phoebus God divert the Omen if it be his will They may remember that at best they sit in Parliament as my Subjects not my Superiors called to be my Counsellors not Dictators Their Summons extends to recommend their Advice not to command My Duty When I first heard of Propositions to be sent me I expected either some good Laws which had been antiquated by the course of time or overlaid by the corruption of manners had been desired to a restauration of their
that matters being impartially setled might be more satisfactory to all and more durable But much of Gods Justice and Mans folly will at length be discovered through all the films and pretensions of Religion in which Politicians wrap up their designs In vain do men hope to build their Piety on the ruines of Loyalty Nor can those confederations or designs be durable when Subjects make Bankrupt of their Allegiance under pretence of setting up a quicker trade for Religion But as my best Subjects of Scotland never deserted Me so I cannot think that the most are gone so far from Me in a Prodigality of their love and respects toward Me as to make Me to despair of their return when besides the bonds of Nature and Conscience which they have to Me all Reason and true Policy will teach them that their chiefest interest consists in their Fidelity to the Crown not in their serviceableness to any Party of the People to a neglect and betraying of my Safety and Honour for their own advantages However the less cause I have to trust to men the more I shall apply My self to God The troubles of My Soul are enlarged O Lord bring Thou Me out of My distress Lord direct Thy Servant in the ways of that Pious Simplicity which is the best Policy Deliver Me from the combined strength of those who have so much of the Serpents Subtility that they forget the Doves Innocency Tho hand joyn in hand yet let them not prevail against My Soul to the betraying of My Conscience and Honour Thou O Lord canst turn the hearts of those Parties in both Nations as Thou didst the men of Judah and Israel to restore David with as much loyal zeal as they did with inconstancy and eagerness pursue him Preserve the love of thy Truth and Vprightness in Me and I shall not despair of My Subjects affections returning towards Me. Thou canst soon cause the overflowing Seas to ebb and retire back again to the bounds which Thou hast appointed for them O My God I trust in Thee let Me not be ashamed let not My Enemies triumph over Me. Let them be ashamed who transgress without a cause let them be turned back that persecute My Soul Let Integrity and Vprightness preserve Me for I wait on Thee O Lord. Redeem thy Church O God out of all its Troubles XIV Vpon the COVENANT THE Presbyterian Scots are not to be hired at the ordinary rate of Auxiliaries nothing will induce them to engage till those that call them in have pawned their Souls to them by a Solemn League and Covenant Where many engines of Religious and fair pretensions are brought chiefly to batter or rase Episcopacy This they make the grand evil Spirit which with some other Imps purposely added to make it more odious and terrible to the Vulgar must by so solemn a Charm and Exorcism be cast out of this Church after more than a Thousand years possession here from the first plantation of Christianity in this Island and an universal prescription of time and practice in all other Churches since the Apostles times till this last Century But no Antiquity must plead for it Presbytery like a young Heir thinks the Father hath lived long enough and impatient not to be in the Bishops Chair and Authority tho Lay-men go away with the Revenues all Art is used to sink Episcopacy and lanch Presbytery in England which was lately boyed up in Scotland by the like artifice of a Covenant Altho I am unsatisfied with many passages in that Covenant some referring to My self with very dubious and dangerous limitations yet I chiefly wonder at the design and drift touching the Discipline and Government of the Church and such a manner of carrying them on to new ways by Oaths and Covenants where it is hard for men to be engaged by no less than swearing for or against those things which are of no clear Moral necessity but very disputable and controverted among Learned and Godly men whereto the application of Oaths can hardly be made and enjoined with that Judgment and certainty in ones self or that Charity and candor to others of different Opinion as I think Religion requires which never refuses fair and equable Deliberations yea and Dissentings too in matters only probable The enjoyning of Oaths upon People must needs in things doubtful be dangerous as in things unlawful damnable and no less superfluous where former Religious and Legal Engagements bound men sufficiently to all necessary duties Nor can I see how they will reconcile such an Innovating Oath and Covenant with that former Protestation which was so lately taken To maintain the Religion established in the Church of England since they count Discipline so great a part of Religion But ambitious minds never think they have laid snares and gins enough to catch and hold the Vulgar credulity for by such politick and seemingly-pious Stratagems they think to keep the populacy fast to their Parties under the terror of Perjury Whereas certainly all honest and wise men ever thought themselves sufficiently bound by former ties of Religion Allegiance and Laws to God and Man Nor can such after-Contracts devised and imposed by a few men in a declared Party without My consent and without any like power or precedent from God's or Mans Laws be ever thought by judicious men sufficient either to absolve or slacken those Moral and Eternal bonds of Duty which lie upon all my Subjects Consciences both to God and Me. Yet as things now stand good men shall least offend God or Me by keeping their Covenant in honest and lawful ways since I have the Charity to think that the chief End of the Covenant in such mens intentions was To preserve Religion in Purity and the Kingdoms in Peace To other than such ends and means they cannot think themselves engaged Nor will those that have any true touches of Conscience endeavour to carry on the best designs much less such as are and will be daily more apparently factious and ambitious by any unlawful means under that Title of the Covenant unless they dare prefer ambiguous dangerous and unauthorized Novelties before their known and sworn Duties which are indispensable both to God and My self I am prone to believe and hope that many who took the Covenant are yet firm to this Judgment That such later Vows Oaths or Leagues can never blot out those former gravings and characters which by just and lawful Oaths were made upon their Souls That which makes such Confederations by way of Solemn Leagues and Covenants more to be suspected is That they are the common road used in all Factions and Powerful Perturbations of State or Church Where formalities of extraordinary Zeal and Piety are never more studied and elaborate than when Politicians most agitate desperate designs against all that is setled or sacred in Religion and Laws which by such screws are cunningly yet forcibly wrested by secret steps and less sensible degrees from