their Heads And this is all I think good to say by way of Answer to your Scotch Affairs and truly I think it is enough of all reason to convince the World what Defenders of the Christian Faith and the Rights and Laws of their Country these Covenanters were God bless the Kingdom of Scotland I and England to from such Reformers as these are and I hope the greatest part of the People of both Nations will say Amen to it with all readiness and cheerfulness And thus Sir without any Obligations on my side for as I Told you in my Defence I only would concern myself with the last Eight Years of King Charles I have run through and proved your Accusations spiteful and false which you have so liberally vented to defame this Great and Good Man and I hope I have given the World a just satisfaction how much you are to be credited as to all the other things you assert you I say who rather than you will not serve your Cause will offer to the World the greatest Lyes and Untruths in Nature I come now Sir to apply myself Sir to the Defence of what I have said in my Book in the behalf of King Charles from your rude Impleadings of them and Reflections upon them And here Sir I will be plain with you I am not at leisure to play the Buffoon by making a Return to your Raillery and little Witticisms wherewith you entertain your Reader in the beginning of your Libel but will follow the Advice of a wiser and honester Man than either you or any of your Party are or will be that is King Solomon namely Not to answer a fool according to his folly least I be like unto him You say That those gracious Acts which I mention were bought of him And what then What hath been more usual ever since Parliaments had a Being in England Pray look into the Statute-Book and tell me what gracious Favours can you find bestowed by the several Kings of this Realm upon their People that those People have not made their Acknowledgments for them by presenting their Soveraigns with great Sums of Money And how comes this to be a fault in King Charles more than in all his Predecessors But buy these Acts did they Pray who had the disposal of the Money How was it laid out Was it given to the King to do what he lifted withal No Sir you know the contrary and that amongst the rest of the Uses it was put to you know a great part of it was bestowed upon the Scots for the good Service they did in rebelling against their King and putting two Kingdoms into a flame and they returned home by the Favour of your Friends loaden with the Nation 's Treasure when if they had had their deserts they had gone back with Halters about their Necks as a sign of what was due to them for so traiterously invading a Kingdom they had nothing to do withal But however to shew he did nothing willingly as to these condescending Acts you tell us when he past the Poll-Bill he demurred to the passing of the Bills for taking away the Star-Chamber and the High Commission And what then May not King's take time to consider as well as other Men Must they who considering the Charge God hath entrusted them withal ought to have better Eyes in their Heads than other Men must they I say only act like Bruits and do things without previous thoughts without a Why or Wherefore Who would sit in a Throne if the Condition of it must be the divesting himself of the Reason and Consideration of a Rational Creature But Sir I will answer this Aspersion in the King 's own Words to the Two Houses and then leave the Reader to judge whether you have done fairly to lessen his Grace upon this Account his Words are these I must tell you That I cannot but be very sensible of those Reports of Discontent that I hear some have taken for not giving my Consent on Saturday Methinks it seems strange that any one should think I could pass two Bills of that importance as these were without taking some fit time to consider of them for it is no less than to alter in a great measure those Fundamental Laws Ecclesiastical and Civil which many of my Predecessors have established And truly I hope this will satisfie tho' not you and such as you are yet any good Man who is not resolved for a Party as to this paticular Reflection Another thing you reflect upon me for is saying That his signing the Bill for taking away my Lord Strafford's Life offered violence to the peace and quiet of his Mind all the Days of his Life And here Sir I cannot but take Notice how you endeavour to make sport with this good Man's Conscience but let me tell you I have always observed that those Men who make sport with other Mens Consciences have none of their own and I am sure you have shewn none throughout this scurrilous Letter unless Lying ad Slandering be the signs of Grace ad Good Conscience in a Common-wealth's-man Pray Sir why might not the King scruple this Do not you know what unusual Arts and Methods were made use of before they could agree upon a Bill to take away this Great Man's Life Do not you know how many of the House of Commons protested against it how thin the House of Lords was when it passed there how the Rabble were brought down to threaten the House and in a clamorous way which you call peaceable to cry Iustice Iustice and how they posted up the Names of the Protestors in order to expose them to the fury ad danger of the discontented and designing part of the City And do not you know after all they were so little satisfied with the Legality of their Proceedings that they in the very Bill itself inferred a Clause that this should not be made use of as a Precedent for the time to come and after all this might not a pious and compassionate King scruple the signing of such a Bill from a very good Conscience Come Sir to answer this to the full and vindicate the King's scruple I will here present to the World for their satisfaction the Sence not of a House of Peers consisting of Seventeen or Eighteen Members nor of a House of Commons consisting of not many above an Hundred but the Sence of two full Houses of Lords and Commons who took off the Attainder of that Noble Earl the Words in the Act are those WHereas Thomas late Earl of Strafford was Impeached of High-Treason upon pretence of endeavouring to subvert the Fundamental Laws and called to a Publick and Solemn Arraignment and Tryal before the Peers in Parliament where he made a paticular Defence to every Article objected against him insomuch that the Turbulent Party then seeing no hopes to effect their unjust Designs by any ordinary way and method of proceedings did at last resolve to
this I say upon the greatest deliberation of Mind without passion or prejudice to any Party of Men whatsoever and upon this score have I taken upon me the Defence of this Great Man not in the least wishing ill to or desiring the Oppression of any sort of Men who will live quietly and peaceably under Their Majesties happy Government nor any ways envying their Liberty of Conscience as long as they make a modest and thankful use of it My Lords and Gentlemen Desiring your candid Thoughts of this honest and well-designed Vndertaking I take my leave of you by subscribing myself Your humble Servant and Faithful Country-man Richard Hollingworth A REPLY TO THE Author of a Letter CALLED A LETTER from Ludlow to Dr. Hollingworth c. SIR I Have met with your Book without the Civility of your fencing me one but I quickly found reason not to wonder at that for upon reading you over I found Civility none of your Talent and tho' I am so far from being in the least concerned at your ungentile Behaviour and unhandsome Usage of myself that I think it really an Honour to be reflected on by a Person of your Principles and should have the worse Opinion of myself if I had the good word either of you or those of your Party yet Sir when I read over your barbarous dealing with that excellent Prince King Charles I. your dirty and Tinker-like Names by which you call him and those many undeserved Indignities you load his Sacred Memory withal truly Sir it makes my Heart ake and my Flesh tremble to think at this time of the Day and under such a Government there should be found so bold so impudent and so unmannerly a Person in the Kingdom that dares belch forth such leud such dishonourable and false Things against one who was the Lord's Anointed and your own lawful and undoubted Soveraign What Sir do not you know that the greatest part of the Nobility Gentry and Commons of England do to this very Day continue and preserve a great Veneration for the Name and Memory of King Charles the First Have you forgot when the Nation was restored to its Rights and Laws not over-awed by an Insolent and Threatning Army that they chose a Representative that presently expressed the Sence of the Nation as to that Prince and condemned by an Act of State all those who had any hand in his Murther and appointed a Day which you like yourself scornfully call a Madding-day for ever to bewail the Sin and thereby to prevent those Judgments which they thought that Horrid Act might be justly attended withal Cannot you further remember or have you not heard that Their present Majesties had two Sermons preached before them the last Thirtieth of Ianuary that both They and the rest that heard them might the better be engaged to renew their just Sence of as well as deep Sorrow for the detestable Fact And Sir did not the Lords and Commons appoint two Preachers to help their sorrowful Meditations that Day the one the Right Reverend Bishop Kidder and the other the Reverend Dr. Sherlock And have you not read those Sermons for which the two Houses thanked them and ordered them to be Printed for the Good of the Nation that the Memory of that Great Man might be kept alive and the Sence of his Horrid Murther preserved in the Breasts of the People Come Sir if you have not read them I will give you an Account of some Passages in them both and I beseech you for your Soul 's good to mind them for 't is pity any one Body in the Kingdom should not know them that so they may be preserved from the Poyson and Infection of such scurrilous Books as this of yours is Pag. 20 says the good Bishop On this Day it was that our Soveraign of blessed Memory fell by the Hands of Violence and Wickedness then was his Righteous Blood shed and tho' we gave no explicit Consent to this barbarous Murther and perhaps with the Iews have said That if we had been in the Days of our Fore-fathers we would not have been Partakers with them yet all this while we may deceive ourselves and others if we do not confess this Sin with great humility and abandon all propensity to so great a Wickedness And Pag. 22. says this good Man We may learn what cause we have to be humbled for our Fathers Sins and more particularly for the Wickedness committed on this Day then was the Nation stained with the Righteous Blood of an innocent and excellent Prince that Bloud God will require of the principal Criminals and Accessories also of the first Offenders and their Associates and as we would not be charged with it let us humble ourselves before God the Stain can be removed no otherways than by Tears of Repentance and the Blood of Jesus And truly Sir before I cite the next passage let me tell you here is very bad News for you and all your Adherents and therefore instead of vindicating thorough the hardness of your Hearts I pray you humble yourselves before God that so the continuance in this Sin may not be your Ruin Pag. 25. Speaking further of this Murther he says thus It will admit of no extenuation it was an Action foul and deformed barbarous and cruel without excuse or plea he must be lost to the Reason of a Man and the Tenderness of a Christian whom it strikes not with Horrour Pag 26. We are all concerned in this Day 's Work to bewail the Wickedness of Men and improve the amazing Providence of God And once more We have since this Fatal Blow was given suffered severely and what the Iews say of the Calf in the Wilderness That there is something of it in all their Sufferings may with as much Truth be said of the barbarous Murther of this Day Our Sufferings have been the Product of the horrid Sin of this Day for many of them they bear the Mark and Signatures of it And truly Sir let me tell you if the Bishop be in the right as all good Men conclude he is I am sure you are very much in the wrong and ought to repent and give Glory to God by confessing your great Fault in so villanously bespattering such a Man as this Great and Good King was If after this you look into the Sermon preached the same day before the Commons by that great and well-studied Divine Dr. Sherlock you will find pag. 5. these words The Sin we this Day lament I shall make no scruple to call it what you have this Day in your Publick Prayers to Almighty God confessed it to be the barbarous Murther of an excellent Prince And Pag. 10. If we add to this the Character of his Person and those Princely Vertues which adorned his Life such Vertues as are rarely found in meaner Persons nay which would have adorned even an Hermit's Cell it still aggravates the Iniquity of his Murther And at the bottom
stile themselves The Commons of England and raising Money at Will and Pleasure upon their Fellow-Subjects contrary to the Fundamental Constitution of the Kingdom as for such as these you may take them to yourself and make much of them for I assure you they are in no Credit with us who are true Lovers of Old England indeed You begin your Epistle with a prophane Piece of Wit such as Men of your loose and irreligious Temper are always fond of the Subject of namely the Church and the Clergy but the best of it is but borrowed and truly I being so dull as you report me to be shall not undertake to reply to it for fear I should run into the same wicked folly both you and the Author of it have always been apt to be guilty of And besides Sir your hideous and base Reflections upon King Charles the First have made me too melancholly to indulge the gayety of my Fancy if I was naturally given that way I do not cast my eye upon any part of your Book without horrour and consternation of Mind to think there is yet in the World a grey haired Man with one Foot in the Grave provoking God by shooting out his bitter and poysonous Arrows into the Sides of a Person whose Memory is so precious to so vast a Number of the devout and serious part of the Nation and therefore I shall betake myself with all the brevity I can to consider your various Charges you so impudently draw up against the King and Queens Grandfather both in your Epistle and in the Book it self which is more than I am concerned to do because I only undertook to defend the last Eight Years of his Life and acknowledged Mistakes in his Government before which I proved he not only offered but actually rectified and therefore I thought we ought all to imitate God who pardons a Sinner and calls his Errors no more to a remembrance when he testifies his Repentance by a thorough Reformation But God Sir it appears by your Spirit and Actions is none of your Pattern but rather then you will not gratifie your Lusts against this Great King you will look into every part of his Life and arraign him for every particular Error nay will pick up every ill-natured Lye and false Suggestion that his sworn Enemies endeavoured to blast his Credit amongst his Subjects withal and in the mean time not shew so much good Nature or common Christianity as to speak of one of his Vertues tho' so many were conspicuous in him thorough his whole Reign No Sir that would not serve your Ends nor answer the Design of your Party which the wise Men of the Nation are sufficiently aware of and I hope will take Care to prevent In your Epistle you tell us of a Letter which the Prince wrote to the Pope which from the beginning to the end savours of Popery and you mention four Particulars to prove it First You tell us That he prosesses nothing could affect him so much as Alliance with a Prince that had the same Apprehensions of True Religion with himself For God's sake Sir read over the Letter again and tell me where there is such a word or any thing like it I have the Letter now before me as it is in Rushworth and I assure you upon reading it again and again I find nothing like it and I hope I am not so dull but I understand Common Sence and if it was not for the unmannerliness of the expression I would I am justly provoked to say Leave your L Secondly What Sir You say That he calls Popery the Catholick Apostolick Roman Religion all others Novelty and Faction In what part of the Letter find you this Sir I tell you it is false there is not one Syllable of this nature throughout the whole and I challenge the whole World of Malice to shew me any thing like it in the Letter And now again Sir who ought to leave there L Thirdly You say That he protested he did not esteem it a matter of greater Honour to be descended from great Princes than to imitate them in the Zeal of their Piety who had often exposed their Estates and Lives in the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. And pray where is the fault in this I hope any Man that knows what the Holy Cross means in its proper sence which is nothing else but the Christian Religion purchased upon the Cross by the Blood of Jesus will say that this Protestation is so far from blackning this Great Prince that it redounds to his Credit and Honour And truly Sir he that considers his Life and Death will say He made this good to a tittle for he lost both not only for his standing up for the Laws of his Country but for the Defence of the best constituted Christian Church in the World Fourthly You say That he solemnly engaged to the Pope to spare nothing in the World even to the hazarding of his Life and Estate to settle a thing so pleasing to God as Unity with Rome Surely Sir you are past all manner of shame and a Man would think you was possess'd for there is not one word of this in the Letter and none but a Person who cares not what Falsities he obtrudes upon the World in order to deceive the silly and credulous part of Mankind would have so boldly Printed such a notorious Falshood as this is and who ought to leave his L Sir And as for his Reply to the Pope's Nuncio which you mention after these Falshoods pray tell me in what Authentick Author I may find it for I assure you you have put so many false things together before that you have so much lost your Credit with me that I will believe nothing of your bare assertion and I do not doubt but every Body that reads us both will be of my mind Come come Sir had you done like an honest Man that was resolved to serve Truth and not a Faction you would have told the World that when the Great Spanish Favourite at his first coming to Madrid began to talk of his changing his Religion he answered He came for a Wife and not for a Religion you would have told us what Mr. Rushworth does pag. 83. That when they used so many various Arts to allure him to Popery that he remained steadfast to his Religion neither did he express any shew of change further you would have told what Mr. Iohnson the Scotch-man in his Latin History of those times acquaints us withal namely that when the Romish Divines came about him and pressed him to profess the Romish Religion and desired that he would hearken to those Reasons they would give him against those who had disturbed their Ancient Religion he positively denied it and let them know He was so setled in his Religion that he would not be pluckt from it you would have further have told When they found all their Attempts upon him in
you who had overturned the Government and violated all the Laws of the Land and I wish he had seen them before that he might have escaped those Punishments which made such a noise and turned to so bad an Account in the Kingdom and therefore I shall say no more upon this matter but this That the great mistake the Nation was then in and many are to this very day is that these three Men suffered for pure Religion for being severe Christians in their Lives and Conversations and standing up for the Cause of Christ whereas it appears throughout the whole Story it was for Libelling the Government and putting Indignities and Affronts upon the then Legal Administrators such as no Government that values itsself and its Honour upon the face of the Earth would bear without just Resentments and sutable Punishments Christian Religion teaches Men to be modest and peaceable and with all patience to suffer for well doing and to acknowledge God's Justice when his Rod is laid upon their Backs for evil doing And so much by way of Answer to that part of your Book by which you have endeavoured to blacken the good King's Reign and to run down the Reputation of Bishop Laud and to express your Indignation against me for saying other ways he was a good Man which I still say and have a very good Man to back me namely Judge Whitlock a Man of a clear Credit and sound Judgment who as his Son tells us in his Mem. said of him That he had too much fire but was a just and good Man And truly Sir I think it is more like a Christian to speak well of a Christian Bishop than to call him by such spiteful and reproachful Names as you have done in your scurrilous Book I come now to make some Reflections upon your Scotch Story which you have told with so much Venome and Partiality that you have every ways acted like your malicious and ungodly self and shewn you are a Man so resolved for a Party that rather than not serve it to purpose you will call Darkness Light and Light Darkness You begin with a Relation of Bishop Laud's composing a Common-Prayer-Book for them and tell us how the Mutinies and Disturbances in Scotland sprung from thence which truly I am very sorry for for I am sure it had been better for them and the Christian Religion professed amongst them if they had submitted to the Usage of the Book and continued it ever since The Worship of God would have been performed with Order and Decency and in a way suitable to his Divine Nature and Perfections and consequently could not have been exposed to the Contempt and Scorn of Men wickedly and atheistically inclined nor yet have been nauseous to the soberly wise and seriously devout part of that Kingdom as now it is by reason of those rude and undigested Addresses those extempore and unpremeditated Expostulations with God those bold and saucy Applications that for want of a good Book or a well framed Form of Prayer of their own before-hand and committed to Memory are so commonly made use of in their Pulpits too many of the Accounts of which we have lately since the Great Turn in Scotland received from very good Hands and undeniable Testimonies I but this bold-face says This Liturgy was not only composed by Bishop Laud but sent by him to the Pope and Cardinals for their approbation and this Story I must not dare to deny But with your good leave Mr. Modesty I will venture upon the piece of Confidence as to tell you I do not believe it and that because you assert it you whom I have proved already to falsifie and misrepresent every thing that you pretend written Authority for What! Bishop Laud send to the Pope and Cardinals for their Approbation of a Liturgy almost the same with our own Sure Sir you have forgot the hatred the Popes of Rome as well as the Dissenters have to our Church Common-Prayer-Book You have forgot the Bull of the Pope in the Tenth of Queen Elizabeth which commands all his pretended Catholick Children not to attend upon the Publick Liturgical Devotions of our Church and that under the severest Censure of the Apostolical Chair and you have also forgot but you have always a bad Memory for any thing that makes either for Monarchy or Episcopacy that the Papists upon that Account and by Virtue of the Authority of that Bull have declined our Publick Service ever since And therefore 't is very likely Bishop Laud should send a Liturgy to Rome for its approbation which hath so long stood condemned by the highest Authority that presides there In short Sir I cannot but conclude from this Story that you have got a Secret or else you would have blushed to have vented such an altogether improbable and yet so designedly a malicious Tale as this is and therefore notwithstanding your Marginal Caution I will say Leave your fooling and think not to abuse the good People of England with such Insinuations as will gain a belief from none but those who are resolved to believe all you boldly assert as Oracle against the clearest and brightest Reasons to the contrary Well Sir you say it was sent into Scotland pray let me ask you one Question In whose Name and by whole Authority was it sent Was it put upon them by a Rump Parliament an usurping Protector or by their lawful and undoubted Soveraign If by their Soveraign pray then Sir why if they did not like it did they not first submissively petition their lawful King and let him know how disgustful the Liturgy was to many of his Subjects in that Kingdom What must nothing serve these pure and refined Reformers but Fire presently called from Heaven must Clubs and Staffs and Old Womens Joynt-stools decide the Controversie betwixt their Soveraign and them Must they presently assault one of the Bishops the Earl of Traquaire the Lord Provost and Council of the City and threw down the Lord Treasurer going to the Council taking from him his Hat Cloak and White Staffe by violent Hands Good God! what dutiful what harmless and peaceable Subjects are these How much do they deserve such an Advocate as our Letter-Writer And what worst of things will not a Seditious Commonwealth's-man plead for when he will vindicate such Barbarities as these are But to go further with you Sir Must these Men of their own heads without any Warrant from the Legal Authority of the Nation enter into a Covenant without the King nay against his Will and Pleasure As they could not but know and that because they had entered into one with King Iames's Consent in 1580 to defend the Purity of Religion and the King's Person and Rights against the Church of Rome What are these two Covenants of one and the same Nature entred into by one and the same Authority a Covenant entred into by King Iames's Consent under his Hand and Seal and a Covenant entred