gleaning out of Books writt'n purposely to help Devotion And if in likelyhood he have borrowd much more out of Prayer-books then out of Pastorals then are these painted Feathers that set him off so gay among the people to be thought few or none of them his own But if from his Divines he have borrow'd nothing nothing out of all the Magazin and the rheume of thir Mellifluous prayers and meditations let them who now mourn for him as for Tamuz them who howle in thir Pulpits and by thir howling declare themselvs right Wolves remember and consider in the midst of thir hideous faces when they doe onely not cutt thir flesh for him like those ruefull Preists whom Eliah mock'd that he who was once thir Ahab now thir Josiah though faining outwardly to reverence Churchmen yet heer hath so extremely set at nought both them and thir praying faculty that being at a loss himself what to pray in Captivity he consulted neither with the Liturgie nor with the Directory but neglecting the huge fardell of all thir honycomb devotions went directly where he doubted not to find better praying to his mind with Pammela in the Countesses Arcadia What greater argument of disgrace ignominy could have bin thrown with cunning upon the whole Clergy then that the King among all his Preistery and all those numberles volumes of thir theological distillations not meeting with one man or book of that coate that could befreind him with a prayer in Captivity was forc'd to robb Sr. Philip and his Captive Shepherdess of thir Heathen orisons to supply in any fashion his miserable indigence not of bread but of a single prayer to God I say therfore not of bread for that want may befall a good man and yet not make him totally miserable but he who wants a prayer to beseech God in his necessity t is unexpressible how poor he is farr poorer within himself then all his enemies can make him And the unfitness the undecency of that pittifull supply which he sought expresses yet furder the deepness of his poverty Thus much be said in generall to his prayers and in special to that Arcadian prayer us'd in his Captivity anough to undeceave us what esteeme wee are to set upon the rest For he certainly whose mind could serve him to seek a Christian prayer out of a Pagan Legend and assume it for his own might gather up the rest God knows from whence one perhaps out of the French Astraea another out of the Spanish Diana Amadis and Palmerin could hardly scape him Such a person we may be sure had it not in him to make a prayer of his own or at least would excuse himself the paines and cost of his invention so long as such sweet rapsodies of Heathenism and Knighterrantry could yeild him prayers How dishonourable then and how unworthy of a Christian King were these ignoble shifts to seem holy and to get a Saintship among the ignorant and wretched people to draw them by this deception worse then all his former injuries to go a whooring after him And how unhappy how forsook of grace and unbelovd of God that people who resolv to know no more of piety or of goodnes then to account him thir cheif Saint and Martyr whose bankrupt devotion came not honestly by his very prayers but having sharkd them from the mouth of a Heathen worshipper detestable to teach him prayers sould them to those that stood and honourd him next to the Messiah as his own heav'nly compositions in adversity for hopes no less vain and presumptuous and death at that time so imminent upon him then by these goodly reliques to be held a Saint and Martyr in opinion with the People And thus farr in the whole Chapter we have seen and consider'd and it cannot but be cleer to all men how and for what ends what concernments and necessities the late King was no way induc'd but every way constrain'd to call this last Parlament yet heer in his first prayer he trembles not to avouch as in the eares of God That he did it with an upright intention to his glory and his peoples good Of which dreadfull attestation how sincerely meant God to whom it was avow'd can onely judge and he hath judg'd already and hath writt'n his impartial Sentence in Characters legible to all Christ'ndom and besides hath taught us that there be som whom he hath giv'n over to delusion whose very mind and conscience is defil'd of whom Saint Paul to Titus makes mention II. Upon the Earle of Straffords Death THis next Chapter is a penitent confession of the King and the strangest if it be well weigh'd that ever was Auricular For hee repents heer of giving his consent though most unwillingly to the most seasonable and solemn peece of Justice that had bin don of many yeares in the Land But his sole conscience thought the contrary And thus was the welfare the safety and within a little the unanimous demand of three populous Nations to have attended stil on the singularity of one mans opi nionated conscience if men had bin always so tame and spiritless and had not unexpectedly found the grace to understand that if his conscience were so narrow and peculiar to it selfe it was not fitt his Authority should be so ample and Universall over others For certainly a privat conscience sorts not with a public Calling but declares that Person rather meant by nature for a private fortune And this also we may take for truth that hee whose conscience thinks it sin to put to death a capital Offendor will as oft think it meritorious to kill a righteous Person But let us heare what the sin was that lay so sore upon him and as one of his Prayers giv'n to Dr. Juxton testifies to the very day of his death it was his signing the Bill of Straffords execution a man whom all men look'd upon as one of the boldest and most impetuous instruments that the King had to advance any violent or illegal designe He had rul'd Ireland and som parts of England in an Arbitrary manner had indeavour'd to subvert Fnndamental Lawes to subvert Parlaments and to incense the King against them he had also endeavor'd to make Hostility between England and Scotland He had counceld the King to call over that Irish Army of Papists which he had cunningly rais'd to reduce England as appear'd by good Testimony then present at the Consultation For which and many other crimes alledg'd and prov'd against him in 28 Articles he was condemnd of high Treason by the Parlament The Commons by farr the greater number cast him the Lords after they had bin satisfi'd in a full discours by the Kings Sollicitor and the opinions of many Judges deliver'd in thir House agreed likewise to the Sentence of Treason The People universally cri'd out for Justice None were his Friends but Coutiers and Clergimen the worst at that time and most corrupted sort of men and Court Ladies not
cannot but be farr short of spirit and autority without dores to govern a whole Nation Her tarrying heer he could not think safe among them who were shaking hands with Allegiance to lay faster hold on Religion and taxes them of a duty rather then a crime it being just to obey God rather then Man and impossible to serve two Maisters I would they had quite shak'n off what they stood shaking hands with the fault was in thir courage not in thir cause In his Prayer he prayes that The disloyaltie of his Protestant Subjects may not be a hindrance to her love of the true Religion and never prays that the dissoluteness of his Court the scandals of his Clergy the unsoundness of his own judgement the lukewarmness of his life his Letter of compliance to the Pope his permitting Agents at Rome the Popes Nuntio and her Jesuited Mother here may not be found in the sight of God farr greater hindrances to her conversion But this had bin a suttle Prayer indeed and well pray'd though as duely as a Pater-noster if it could have charm'd us to sit still and have Religion and our Liberties one by one snatch'd from us for fear least rising to defend our selves wee should fright the Queen a stiff Papist from turning Protestant As if the way to make his Queen a Protestant had bin to make his Subjects more then half way Papists He prays next That his constancy may be an antidote against the poyson of other mens example His constancy in what Not in Religion for it is op'nly known that her Religion wrought more upon him then his Religion upon her and his op'n favouring of Papists and his hatred of them call'd Puritants the ministers also that prayd in Churches for her Conversion being checkt from Court made most men suspect she had quite perverted him But what is it that the blindness of hypocrisy dares not doe It dares pray and thinks to hide that from the eyes of God which it cannot hide from the op'n view of man VIII Upon His repulse at Hull and the fate of the Hothams Hull a town of great strength and opportunitie both to sea and land affaires was at that time the Magazin of all those armes which the King had bought with mony most illegally extorted from his subjects of England to use in a causless and most unjust civil warr against his Subjects of Scotland The King in high discontent and anger had left the Parlament and was gon toward the North the Queen into Holland where she pawn'd and set to sale the Crown-Jewels a crime heretofore counted treasonable in Kings and to what intent these summs were rais'd the Parlament was not ignorant His going northward in so high a chafe they doubted was to possess himself of that strength which the storehouse and situation of Hull might add suddenly to his malignant party Having first therefore in many Petitions earnestly pray'd him to dispose and settle with consent of both Houses the military power in trusty hands and he as oft refusing they were necessitated by the turbulence and danger of those times to put the Kingdom by thir own autority into a posture ofdefence and very timely sent sir John Hotham a member of the House and Knight of that county to take Hull into his custody and some of the Train'd bands to his assistance For besides the General danger they had before the Kings going to York notice giv'n them of his privat Commissions to the Earl of Newcastle and to Colonel Legg one of those imploid to bring the Army up against the ParParlament who had already made som attempts the latter of them under a disguise to surprise that place for the Kings party And letters of the Lord Digby were intercepted wherin was wisht that the K. would declare himself and retire to some safe place other information came from abroad that Hull was the place design'd for some new enterprise And accordingly Digby himself not long after with many other Commanders and much forrain Ammunition landed in those parts But these attempts not succeeding and that Town being now in custody of the Parlament he sends a message to them that he had firmely resolv'd to go in person into Ireland to chastise those wicked Rebels for these and wors words he then gave them and that toward this work he intended forthwith to raise by his commissions in the Counties neere Westchester a guard for his own person consisting of 2000. foot and 200. horse that should be arm'd from his Magazin at Hull On the other side the Parlament forseeing the Kings drift about the same time send him a Petition that they might have leave for necessary causes to remoove the magazin of Hull to the Towre of London to which the King returnes his denial and soon after going to Hull attended with about 400. Horse requires the Governour to deliver him up the Town wherof the Governour besought humbly to be excus'd till he could send notice to the Parlament who had intrusted him wherat the King much incens'd proclaims him Traitor before the Town Walls and gives immediat order to stop all passages between him and the Parlament Yet he himself dispatches post after post to demand justice as upon a Traitor using a strange iniquitie to require justice upon him whom he then way layd and debari'd from his appearance The Parlament no sooner understood what had pass'd but they declare that Sir John Hotham had don no more then was his duty and was therfore no Traitor This relation being most true proves that which is affirm'd heer to be most fals seeing the Parlament whom he accounts his greatest Enemies had more confidence to abett and own what Sir John Hotham had don then the King had confidence to let him answer in his own behalf To speake of his patience and in that solemn manner he might better have forborne God knows saith he it affected me more with sorrow for others then with anger for my self nor did the affront trouble me so much as their sin This is read I doubt not and beleev'd and as there is some use of every thing so is there of this Book were it but to shew us what a miserable credulous deluded thing that creature is which is call'd the Vulgar who notwithstanding what they might know will beleeve such vain-glories as these Did not that choleric and vengefull act of proclaiming him Traitor before due process of Law having bin convinc'd so late before of his illegallity with the five Members declare his anger to be incens'd doth not his own relation confess as much and his second Message left him fuming three dayes after and in plaine words testifies bis impatience of delay till Hotham be severely punish'd for that which he there termes an insupportable affront Surely if his sorrow for Sir John Hothams sin were greater then his anger for the affront it was an exceeding great sorrow indeed and wondrous charitable But if it
him nor condemn'd themselves But he will needs have vengeance to pursue and overtake them though to bring it in it cost him an inconvenient and obnoxious comparison As the Mice and Ratts overtook a German Bishop I would our Mice and Ratts had bin as Orthodoxal heer and had so pursu'd all his Bishops out of England then vermin had ridd away vermin which now hath lost the lives of too many thousand honest men to doe He cannot but observe this Divine Justice yet with sorrow and pitty But sorrow and pitty in a weak and over-maister'd enemy is lookt upon no otherwise then as the ashes of his revenge burnt out upon it self or as the damp of a coold fury when we say it gives But in this manner to sit spelling and observing divine justice upon every accident slight disturbance that may happ'n humanly to the affaires of men is but another fragment of his brok'n revenge yet the shrewdest the cunningest obloquy that can be thrown upon thir actions For if he can perswade men that the Parlament and thir cause is pursu'd with Divine vengeance he hath attain'd his end to make all men forsake them and think the worst that can be thought of them Nor is he onely content to suborn Divine Justice in his censure of what is past but he assumes the person of Christ himself to prognosticate over us what he wishes would come So little is any thing or person sacred from him no not in Heav'n which he will not use and put on if it may serve him plausibly to wreck his spleen or ease his mind upon the Parlament Although if ever fatal blindness did both attend and punish wilfulness if ever any enjoy'd not comforts for neglecting counsel belonging to thir peace it was in none more conspicuously brought to pass then in himself and his predictions against the Parlament and thir adherents have for the most part bin verify'd upon his own head and upon his chief Counselors He concludes with high praises of the Army But praises in an enemy are superfluous or smell of craft and the Army shall not need his praises nor the Parlament fare worse for his accusing prayers that follow Wherin as his Charity can be no way comparable to that of Christ so neither can his assurance that they whom he seems to pray for in doing what they did against him knew not what they did It was but arrogance therfore and not charity to lay such ignorance to others in the sight of God till he himself had bin infallible like him whose peculiar words he overweeningly assumes XXVII Intitil'd to the Prince of Wales VVHat the King wrote to his Son as a Father concerns not us what he wrote to him as a King of England concerns not him God and the Parlament having now otherwise dispos'd of England But because I see it don with some artifice and labour to possess the people that they might amend thir present condition by his or by his Sons restorement I shall shew point by point that although the King had bin reinstall'd to his desire or that his Son admitted should observe exactly all his Fathers precepts yet that this would be so farr from conducing to our happiness either as a remedy to the present distempers or a prevention of the like to come that it would inevitably throw us back again into all our past and fulfill'd miseries would force us to fight over again all our tedious Warrs and put us to another fatal struggling for Libertie and life more dubious then the former In which as our success hath bin no other then our cause so it will be evident to all posteritie that his misfortunes were the meer consequence of his perverse judgement First he argues from the experience of those troubles which both he and his Son have had to the improvement of thir pietie and patience and by the way beares witness in his own words that the corrupt education of his youth which was but glanc'd at onely in some former passages of this answer was a thing neither of mean consideration nor untruly charg'd upon him or his Son himself confessing heer that Court delights are prone either to root up all true vertue and honour or to be contented only with some leaves and withering formalities of them without any reall fruits tending to the public good Which presents him still in his own words another Rehoboam soft'nd by a farr wors Court then Salomons and so corrupted by flatteries which he affirmes to be unseparable to the overturning of all peace and the loss of his own honour and Kingdoms That he came therfore thus bredd up and nurtur'd to the Throne farr wors then Rehoboam unless he be of those who equaliz'd his Father to King Salomon we have heer his own confession And how voluptuously how idlely raigning in the hands of other men he either tyranniz'd or trifl'd away those seventeen yeares of peace without care or thought as if to be a King had bin nothing els in his apprehension but to eat and drink and have his will and take his pleasure though there be who can relate his domestic life to the exactness of a diary there shall be heer no mention made This yet we might have then foreseen that he who spent his leisure so remissly and so corruptly to his own pleasing would one day or other be wors busied and imployd to our sorrow And that he acted in good earnest what Rehoboam did but threat'n to make his little finger heavier then his Fathers loynes and to whip us with his two twisted Scorpions both temporal and spiritual Tyranny all his Kingdoms have felt What good use he made afterward of his adversitie both his impenitence and obstinacy to the end for he was no Manasseh and the sequel of these his meditated resolutions abundantly express retaining commending teaching to his Son all those putrid and pernicious documents both of State and of Religion instill'd by wicked Doctors and receav'd by him as in a Vessel nothing better seasond which were the first occasion both of his own and all our miseries And if he in the best maturity of his yeares and understanding made no better use to himself or others of his so long and manifold afflictions either looking up to God or looking down upon the reason of his own affaires there can be no probability that his son bred up not in the soft effeminacies of Court onely but in the rugged and more boistrous licence of undisciplin'd Camps and Garrisons for yeares unable to reflect with judgement upon his own condition and thus ill instructed by his Father should give his mind to walk by any other rules then these bequeath'd him as on his Fathers death-bed as the choisest of all that experience w ch his most serious observation and retirement in good or evil dayes had taught him David indeed by suffering without just cause learnt that meekness and that wisdom by adversity
doe such a business then they themselves who complain most But he must chew such Morsels as Propositions ere he let them down So let him but if the Kingdom shall tast nothing but after his chewing what does he make of the Kingdom but a great baby The streitness of his conscience will not give him leave to swallow down such Camels of sacrilege and injustice as others doe This is the Pharisee up and down I am not as other men are But what Camels of Injustice he could devoure all his three Realms were wittness which was the cause that they almost perish'd for want of Parlaments And he that will be unjust to man will be sacrilegious to God and to bereave a Christian conscience of libertie for no other reason then the narrowness of his own conscience is the most unjust measure to man and the worst sacrilege to God That other which he calls sacrilege of taking from the Clergy that superfluous wealth which antiquitie as old as Constantine from the credit of a Divine vision counted poyson in the Church hath bin ever most oppos'd by men whose righteousness in other matters hath bin least observ'd He concludes as his manner is with high commendation of his own unbiass'd rectitude and beleives nothing to be in them that dissent from him but faction innovation and particular designes Of these repetitions I find no end no not in his prayer which being founded upon deceitfull principl's and a fond hope that God will bless him in those his errors which he calls honest finds a fitt answer of S. James Yee ask and receave not because yee aske amiss As for the truth and sinceritie which he praies may be alwaies found in those his Declarations to the people the contrariety of his own actions will bear eternal witness how little carefull or sollicitous he was what he promis'd or what he utterd there XII Vpon the Rebellion in Ireland THe Rebellion and horrid massacher of English Protestants in Ireland to the number of 1 54000. in the Province of Ulster onely by thir own computation which added to the other three makes up the total summ of that slaughter in all likelyhood fowr times as great although so sudden and so violent as at first to amaze all men that were not accessory yet from whom and from what counsels it first sprung neither was nor could be possibly so secret as the contrivers therof blinded with vaine hope or the despaire that other plots would succeed suppos'd For it cannot be imaginable that the Irish guided by so many suttle and Italian heads of the Romish party should so farr have lost the use of reason and indeed of common Sense as not supported with other strength then thir own to begin a Warr so desperate and irreconcileable against both England and Scotland at once All other Nations from whom they could expect aid were busied to the utmost in thir own most necessary concernments It remaines then that either some autoritie or som great assistance promis'd them from England was that wheron they cheifly trusted And as it is not difficult to discern from what inducing cause this insurrection first arose so neither was it hard at first to have apply'd some effectual remedy though not prevention And yet prevention was not hopeles when Strafford either beleivd not or did not care to beleive the several warnings and discoveries therof which more then once by Papists and by Friers themselves were brought him besides what was brought by depositition divers months before that Rebellion to the Arch bishop of Canterbury and others of the Kings Counsel as the Declaration of no addresses declares But the assurance which they had in privat that no remedy should be apply'd was it seemes one of the chief reasons that drew on thir undertaking And long it was ere that assurance faild them untill the Bishops and Popish Lords who while they sate and Voted still oppos'd the sending aid to Ireland were expelld the House Seeing then the maine incitement and Autority for this Rebellion must be needs deriv'd from England it will be next inquir'd who was the prime Author The King heer denounces a malediction temporal and eternal not simply to the Author but to the malitious Author of this blood-shedd and by that limitation may exempt not himself onely but perhaps the Irish Rebels themselves who never will confess to God or Man that any blood was shed by them malitiously but either in the Catholic cause or common Liberty or some other specious Plea which the conscience from grounds both good and evil usually suggests to it self thereby thinking to elude the direct force of that imputation which lies upon them Yet he acknowledges It fell out as a most unhappy advantage of some mens malice against him but indeed of most mens just suspicion by finding in it no such wide departure or disagreement from the scope of his former Counsels and proceedings And that he himself was the Author of that Rebelion he denies both heer and elswhere with many imprecations but no solid evidence What on the other side against his denyal hath bin affirm'd in three Kingdoms being heer briefly set in view the Reader may so judge as he findes cause This is most certain that the King was ever friendly to the Irish Papists and in his third yeare against the plain advice of Parlament like a kind of Pope sold them many indulgences for Mony and upon all occasions advancing the Popish party and negotiating under hand by Priests who were made his Agents ingag'd the Irish Papists in a Warr against the Scotch Protestants To that end he furnish'd them and had them train'd in Arms and kept them up either op'nly or under hand the onely army in his three Kingdoms till the very burst of that Rebellion The Summer before that dismal October a Committy of most active Papists all since in the head of that Rebellion were in great favour at White-Hall and admitted to many privat consultations with the King and Queen And to make it evident that no mean matters were the subject of those Conferences at their request he gave away his peculiar right to more then five Irish Counties for the payment of an inconsiderable Rent They departed not home till within two Mounths before the Rebellion and were either from the first breaking out or soon after found to be the cheif Rebels themselves But what should move the King besides his own inclination to Popery and the prevalence of his Queen over him to hold such frequent and close meetings with a Committy of Irish Papists in his own House while the Parlament of England sate unadvis'd with is declar'd by a Scotch Author and of it self is cleare anough The Parlament at the beginning of that Summer having put Strafford to death imprison'd others his chief Favorites and driv'n the rest to fly the K. who had in vain tempted both the Scotch and the English Army to come up against