impeach and punish for high Treason Next at the Clergy do their Furies frown Pious Episcopacy must go down They will destroy the Crosier and the Crown Church-men are chain'd and Schismaticks are free'd Mechanicks preach and Holy Fathers bleed The Crown is crucified with the Creed The Church of England doth all Faction foster The Pulpit is usurpt by each Impostor Ex tempore excludes the Pater Noster The Presbyter and Independant Seed Springs with broad-blades to make Religion bleed Herod and Pontius Pilate are agreed The Corner-stone's misplac't by every Pavier With such a bloody method and behaviour Their Ancestors did crucifie our Saviour My Royal Consort from whose fruitfull Womb So many Princes legally have come Is forc't in Pilgrimage to seek a Tomb. Great Britains Heir is forced into France Whilest on his Father's head his foes advance Poor Child He weeps out his Inheritance With my own Power my Majesty they wound In the King's Name the K. himself 's uncrown'd So doth the dust destroy the Diamond With Propositions daily they enchaunt My Peoples ears such as do Reason daunt And the Almighty will not let me Grant They promise to erect my Royal Stem To make me Great t' advance my Diadem If I will first fall down and worship them But for refusal they devour my Thrones Distress my Children and destroy my bones I fear they 'l force me to make bread of stones My Life they prize at such a slender rate That in my absence they draw bills of hate To prove the King a Traytor to the State Felons obtain more priviledge than I They are allow'd to answer e're they dye 'T is death for Me to ask the reason Why. But Sacred Saviour with thy words I woo Thee to forgive and not be bitter to Such as thou know'st do not know what they do For since they from their Lord are so disjointed As to contemn those Edicts he appointed How can they prize the Power of his Anointed Augment my Patience nullifie my hate Preserve my Issue and inspire my Mate Yet though We perish bless this Church and State THE LIFE OF Charles I. CHARLES I. King of Great Britain France and Ireland was the Son of James VI. King of Scots and Anne his Wife a Daughter of Denmark By His Father descended to him all the Rights together with their blood of all our Ancient both Saxon and Norman Kings to this Empire For the Lady Margaret Sister and sole Heir of Edgar Atheling the last surviving Prince of the English Saxons being married to Malcolme Conmor King of Scots conveyed to his Line the Saxon and Margaret Daughter of Henry VII married to James IV. did bring the Norman Titles and Blood From this Imperial Extract He received not more Honour than He gave to it For the blood that was derived to Him elaborated through so many Royal veins He delivered to Posterity more maturated for Glory and by a constant practice of Goodness more habituated for Vertue He was born at Dunfermeling one of the principal Towns of Fife in Scotland on November 19. Anno 1600. in so much weakness that His Baptism was hastened without the usual Ceremonies wherewith such Royal Infants are admitted into the Church Providence seeming to consecrate Him to Sufferings from the Womb and to accustom Him to the exchange of the strictures of Greatness for clouds of Tears There was no observation nor augury made at His Birth concerning the sequel of His Life or course of Fortune which are usually related of such whose lives have different occurrences from those in others of the same state Either the fear of His Death made those about Him less observant of any Circumstances which curious minds would have formed into a Prediction He appearing like a Star that rises so near the point of his setting that it was thought there would be no time for calculation Or He being at distance by His Birth from the Succession to the Crown Prince Henry then having the first hopes made men less solicitous to enquire of His future state on whom being born to a private Condition the Fate of the Kingdom did not depend But in the third year of His age when King James was preparing himself to remove to the English Throne a certain Laird of the Highlands though of very great age came to the Court to take his leave of him whom he found accompanied with all his Children After his address full of affectionate and sage Advice to which his gray hairs gave authority to the King his next application was to Duke CHARLES Anno 1602. for in the second year of His age He was created Duke of Albany Marquess of Ormond Earl of Ross and Baron of Ardmanock whose hands he kiss'd with so great an ardencie of affection that he seemed forgetful of a separation The King to correct his supposed mistake advised him to a more present observance of Prince Henry as the Heir of his Crown of whom he had taken little notice The old Laird answered that he knew well enough what he did and that It was this Child who was then in His Nurses arms who should convey his name and memory to the succeeding ages This then was conceived dotage but the event gave it the credit of a Prophecie and confirmed that opinion That some long-experienced souls in the world before their dislodging arrive to the height of prophetick Spirits Anno 1603. When He was three years old He was committed to the Care and Governance of Sir Robert Cary's Lady as a reward for being the first Messenger of Queen Elizabeth's death whose long life had worn the expectation of the Scotish Nobility into a suspicion that the Lords of England would never acknowledge her to be dead as long as there was any old Woman of that Nation that could wear good cloaths and personate the Majesty of a Queen Anno 1604. In the fourth year after He had wrestled with a Feaver He was brought in October to the English Court at Windsor where on January 6. following having the day before been made Knight of the Bath He was invested with the Title of Duke of York and in the sixth year Anno 1606. was committed to the Pedagogy of Mr. Thomas Murray a person well qualified to that Office though a favourer of Presbytery Under this Tutor and consined to a retiredness by the present weakness of His body He was so diligent and studious that He far advanced in all that kind of Learning which is necessary for a Prince without which even their natural Endowments sâ—em rough and unpleasant in despight of the splendour of their Fortune His proficiency in Letters was so eminent that Prince Henry taking notice of it to put a jest upon Him one day put the Cap of the Archbishop Abbot who was then with the Prince and the Duke and other of the Nobility waiting in the Privy Chamber for the King 's coming out on his Brother's head adding that If He continued a good
Therefore the Earl of Lindsey who commanded the Forces after some gallant yet fruitless attempts returned to England and the Rochellers to the Obedience of the French King As Providence had removed the great Object of the Popular hate and as was pretended the chief obstruction of the Subjects Love to their King the Duke of Buckingham so the King himself labours to remove all other occasions of quarrel before the next Session He restores Archbishop Abbot who for his remisness in the Discipline of the Church had been suspended from his Office and was therefore the Darling of the Commons because in disgrace with the King so contrary are the affections of a corrupted State to those of their Governours to the administration of it again Dr. Potter the great Calvinist was made Bishop of Carlisle Mr. Mountague's Book of Appello Caesarem was called in Proclamations were issued out against Papists Sir Thomas Wentworth an active Leader of the Commons was towards the beginning of this Session as Sir John Savil had been at the end of the last called up into the Lord's House being made Viscount Wentworth and Lord President of the North. But the Honours of these Persons whose parts the King who well understood men thought worthy of his Favour and Employment seeming the rewards of Sedition and the spoils of destructive Counsels the Demagogues were more eager in the pursuit of that which these had attained unto by the like Arts. And therefore despising all the King 's obliging practices in the next Sessions they assumed a power of reforming Church and State called the Customers into question for Levying Tonnage and Poundage made now their Invectives as they formerly did against the Duke against the Lord Treasurer Weston so that it appeared that not the persons of men but the King's trust of them was the object of their Envy and His Favour though never so Vertuous marked them out for Ruine And upon these points they raised the heat to such a degree that fearing they should be dissolved ere they had time to vent their passions they began a Violence upon their own Body an example which lasted longer than their Cause and at last produced the overthrow of all their Priviledges They lockt the Doors of the House kept the Key thereof in one of their own Pockets held the Speaker by strong hand in the Chair till they had thundred out their Votes like dreadfull Anathemaes against those that should Levy and which was more ranting against such as should willingly pay the Tonnage and Poundage This Force the King went with His Guard of Pensioners to remove which they hearing adjourned the House and the King in the House of Lords declaring the Injustice of those Vipers who destroyed their own Liberties dissolved the Parliament While the winds of Sedition raged thus furiously at home more gentle gales came from abroad The French King's designs upon other places required Peace from us and therefore the Signiorie of Venice by her Ambassadors was moved to procure an Accord betwixt Charles and Lewis which the King accepted And not long after Anno 1629. the Spaniard pressed with equal necessities desired Amity which was also granted The King being thus freed from His domestick Embroilments and foreign Enmities soon made the World see His Skill in the Arts of Empire and rendred Himself abroad more considerable than any of His Predecessors And He was more glorious in the eyes of the good and more satisfied in His own breast by confirming Peace with Prudence than if He had finished Wars with destroying Arms. So that His Sceptre was the Caduceus to arbitrate the differences of the Potentates of Europe His Subjects likewise tasted the sweetness of a Reign which Heaven did indulge with all its favours but only that of valuing their Happiness While other Nations weltred in blood His people enjoyed a profound Peace and that Plenty which the freedom of Commerce brings along with it The Dutch and Easterlings used London as the surest Bank to preserve and increase their Trading The Spanish Bullion was here Coined which advantaged the King's Mint and encreased the Wealth of the Merchants who returned most of that Money in our native Commodities While He dispensed these Blessings to the People Heaven was liberal to Him in giving Him a Son to inherit His Dominions May 29. Anno 1630. which was so great matter of rejoycing to the People of uncorrupted minds that Heaven seemed also concerned in the Exultation kindling another Fire more than Ordinary making a Star to be seen the same day at noon From which most men presaged that that Prince should be of high Undertakings and of no common glory among Kings which hath since been confirmed by the miraculous preservation of Him and Heaven seemed to conduct Him to the Throne For this great blessing the King gave publick Thanks to the Author of it Almighty God at St. Paul's Church and God was pleased in a return to those thanks with a numerous Issue afterwards to increase this Happiness For neither Armies nor Navies are such sure props of Empire as Children are Time Fortune private Lusts or Errors may take off or change Friends but those that Nature hath united must have the same Interest especially in Royal Families in whose Prosperities strangers may have a part but their Adversities will be sure to crush their nearest Allies Prospering thus in Peace at home a small time assisted His frugality to get such a Treasure and gave Him leasure to form such Counsels as might curb the Insolence of His Enemies abroad He confederated with other Princes to give a check to the Austrian Greatness assisting by His Treasure Arms and Counsel the King of Sweden to deliver the oppressed German States from the Imperial Oppressions And when Gustavus's fortune made him insolent and he would impose unequal Conditions upon the Paltsgrave the King's Brother in Law He necessitated him notwithstanding his Victories to more easie Articles The next year was notorious for two Trials one of the Lord Audley Earl of Castlehaven who being accused by all the abused parts of his Family of a prodigious wickedness and unnatural uncleanness was by the King submitted to a tryal by his Peers and by them being found Guilty was Condemned and his Nobility could be no patronage for his Crimes but in the King's eyes they appeared more horrid because they polluted that Order and was afterwards executed The other was of a tryal of Combate at a Marshal's Court betwixt Donnold Lord Rey a Scotish High-lander and David Ramsey a Scotish Courtier The first accused the last to have solicited him to a Confederacy with the Marquess Hamilton who was then Commander of some Forces in assistance of the King of Sweden in which Ramsey said all Scotland was ingaged but three and that their friends had gotten provision of Arms and Powder out of England that the Court was extremely corrupted and that the matters of Church and State were so out of
a very honest fellow and had been His best Company for two moneths together He would have those about Him converse rather with Himself than with His Majesty and with them would He mingle Discourses as One of the People none made an end of speaking till His own Modesty not Pride in the King thought it was enough and He never did contradict any man without this mollifying Preface By your favour Sir His discourse as it was familiar so it was directed to raise those that heard it to a nearer approach to Himself by perfection for He did not proudly scoff at but gently laboured to mend the defects of His Subjects When Doctor Hammond had in some degree lost the Manage of His Voice His Majesty shewed him his Infirmity and taught him to amend it which that Excellent Person often mentioned as an instance of a Gracious Condescension of Majesty When Noble Youths came to take their leaves of Him before they went to foreign travel He would not let them go without His Instructions of which this was one My Lord Keep alwayes the best Company and be sure never to be Idle Thus He would confer the Vertues as well as the Titles of Nobility He laboured to keep them as Majesty had made them and that that blood might not be tainted in them which was honoured in their Ancestors Nor did He desire that they should be otherwise than He directed as Tyrants and weak Princes will commend those Vertues which they are afraid of for they dread or envy their Subjects Parts and Abilities Aristotle observes that a Tyrant cares not to hear his Vassals speak any thing that is either Grave or Generous and it is reckoned among the Usurpations of such Monsters that they would have the opinion to be the Only Wise and Gallant Plato indangered his Life when he conversed with the Sicilian Tyrant because he was thought to understand more than his Host It was observed of Cromwell by one of his confident Teachers that in the time of his Tyranny he loved no man that spoke Sense and had several Artisices to disparage it among his Slaves that attended him and he would highly extol those Pulpit-Speakers that had most Canting and least Reason But the King thought it the Honour of Principality to rule over Excellent persons and affected to be Great only by being Better and to raise their Spirits would stoop with His own Of these He alwayes chose the most accomplished that He knew to be His Ministers of State and closest Confidents His Choice of Ministers of State for as the fortune of Princes stands in need of many Friends which are the surest supports of Empire so He would alwayes seek the Best and those He thought fittest for His Employments which a bad or weak King would hate or fear Therefore He had alwayes the finest Pens and ablest Heads in His Cause and Persons likewise of Integrity in His Service for the Archbishop and Earl of Strafford that were clamoured against as the greatest Criminals were not guilty enough even by those accusations which they were loaded with and yet not proved to receive the Censure of the Law but were to be condemned in an unaccustomed way of spilling English blood When some discovered their Abilities even by opposing His Counsels He preferr'd the Publick Benefit which might be by their Endowments to His private Injuries He would either buy them off to His Service by some Place of Trust or win them to His Friendship unless He saw them to be such whose Natures were corrupted by their Designs for He had a most excellent Sagacity in discerning the Spirits of men or they were such who polluted their parts by prostituting Religion to some base ends the injuries of which He could never neglect and such He neither conceived Honourable in a Court nor hoped they would ever be faithful and quiet in a Community Among these Purchases were reckoned the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland the Lord Falkland and others now living whose Perfections honoured His Judgement and justified His Choice He had no Favorite as a Minister of Pleasures His Assection to His People to gratisie whose Lusts and Vanities He might be sollicited to do things contrary to the benefit of the Community but all were Instruments of Government and must be able to serve the Publick whom He took to serve Himself For no Prince was ever more assectionate of His People than He was nor did He think His Interest separate from theirs Those nice distinctions and cautious limits of Prerogative and Liberty which the Faction invented to enjealous the People with were all indistinctly comprised by Him in an Uniform and Constant care of a just Government none dared to advise Him to attempt at a power His Predecessors had parted with or the Laws had concluded Him from For He told the Lords when He purged the Earl of Strafford from the Accusation of Sir Henry Vane that he had advised His Majesty to make use of some Irish to reduce this Kingdom on which though it had but a single and various testimony the Faction built their Practices against His Life I think no body durst ever be so impudent as to move Me to it for if they had I should have made them such an Example and put such a mark upon them that all Posterity should know My Intentions by it For My Intention was ever to govern by the Law and not otherwise He thought He could not be happy unless His People were so as we found our selves miserable when He was not prosperous Therefore He parted with so much of His Prerogative to buy our Peace and purchase our Content He sought their Love by affecting them the only way of gaining it because that Passion only is free and impatient of Command Nor was He ever more pleased than in the enjoyment of it When His Third Parliament granted five Subsidies and it was told Him that there was not One Voice dissenting it is said He wept for joy and it had been happy for the People if the King had alwayes had such cause of Tears and His Eyes had been alwayes wet with the same Contests for Liberty could never have been more unseasonable than under this Prince for He never denied His Subjects the removal of any just Grievance yea He parted sometimes through their own importunity deluded by the Faction with that which should have kept them Free And when He made such Concessions which tended to the prejudice of those that desired it He would say to some about Him that He would never have granted these things but that He hoped they would see the Inconvenience of that power which they begg'd from Him yet themselves could not manage and return it to its proper place before it became their Ruine He was far from the ambition of Ill Princes to seek an unlimited power but He thought it the Office of the best Sovereign to set bounds to Liberty He despised His Life if
THE Royal Martyr OR THE LIFE and DEATH OF KING Charles I. ROMANS 8. more than Conquerour Bona agere mala pati Regium est LONDON Printed by J. M. for R. Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred Majesty MDCLXXVI BEATAM ETEâ—NAâ— CLARIOR E TENEBRIS CAELI SPECTO ASPERAM AT LEVEM â—â—Râ—STI TRACTâ— In Verbo â—uo Spes mea MUNDI CALCO SELENDIDAM AT GRAVEM 〈◊〉 sculp Alij diutius Imperium tenuerunt nemo tam fortiter reliquit Tacit. Histor Lib. 2. c. 47 p. 4.17 TO THE KINGS most Excellent MAJESTY CHARLES II. By the Grace of God KING of Great Britain France and Ireland c. May it please Your MAJESTY SO Clear and Indisputable is Your Majesties Title to the following Papers that to prefix any other name before them were a boldness next door to sacriledge They had the honour when first published to attend the Works of Your Majesties Royal Father of blessed Memory the greatest part of which Impression collected with great Cost and Care having in the late Conflagration perished in the common flames I was ambitious by reviving this Piece to do some honour to the Memory of so Great a Prince and that the world might see how far Truth and Justice and a better Cause is able to hold out under the most prosperous Triumphs of violence and oppression and that when Villains may be suffered so far to prevail as to despoil Majesty of all advantages of Power and Greatness it can at the same time be secure in the comforts of its own innocence and vertue That Heaven would bless Your Majesty with a long Life and a prosperous Reign with all the blessings of this and a better world is the hearty and incessant prayer of Your Majesties most humbly devoted Subject and Servant Richard Royston CHARLES R. CHARLES the Second by the Grace of God King of England Scotland France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. To all Our loving Subjects of what Degree Condition or Quality soever within Our Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland or any of Our Dominions greeting Whereas We have received sufficient Testimony of the Fidelity and Loyalty of Our Servant Richard Royston of Our City of London Book-seller and of the great Losses and Troubles he hath sustained for his Faithfulness to Our Royal Father of blessed Memory and Our Self in the Printing and Publishing of many Messages and Papers of Our said Blessed Father especially those most Excellent Discourses and Soliloquies by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Know ye That it is Our Royal Will and Pleasure and We do by these presents Grant unto the said Richard Royston his Executors Administrators and Assigns the sole Printing and Publishing of the said Messages Papers and Discourses contained in the Book Intituled Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae and of all or any other the Works of Our said Royal Father with other Papers and Declarations concerning Our said Royal Father in any Volume or Volumes whatsoever Of which Our Grant and Royal Pleasure We will and require all Our loving Subjects to take notice And that none of them presume to print or cause to be printed vended or put to sale the said Book Intituled Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae or any part of the said Papers or Works of Our said Royal Father within these Our Realms and Dominions or any of them whether Printed within these Our Dominions or Imported from Forein Parts contrary to Our express Pleasure herein declared without the Licence and Consent of the said Richard Royston his Executors Administrators or Assigns under such Penalties as are by the Lawes and Statutes of this Our Realm imposed upon such Persons as Imprint Import Vend or Put to sale unlicensed and prohibited Books Any Privilege Custome or Usage to the contrary notwithstanding In witness c. Given at Our Court at White-Hall the nine and twentieth day of November in the twelfth year of Our Reign TO THE READER IN these Papers READER thou hast a short Account how this best of PRINCES Lived and Died a Subject that was fit to be writ only with the point of a Scepter none but a Royal Breast can have Sentiments equal to His Vertues nor any but a Crowned Head can frame Expressions to represent His Worth He that had nothing Common or Ordinary in His Life and Fortune is almost profaned by a Vulgar Pen. The attempt I confess admits no Apologie but this That it was fit that Posterity when they read His Works for they shall continue while these Islands are inhabited to upbraid Time and reproach Marble Monuments of weakness should also be told that His Actions were as Heroick as His Writings and His Life more Elegant than His Style Which not being undertaken by some Noble hand that was happy in a near approach to Majesty and so could have taken more exact measures of this Great Example for Mighty Kings rendred it in more full proportions and given it more lively Colours I was by importunity prevailed upon to imitate those affectionate Slaves who would gather up the scattered limbs of some great Person that had been their Lord yet fell at the Pleasure of his Enemies burn them on some Plebeian Pyle and entertain their ashes in an homely Vrn till future times could cover them with a Pyramid or inclose them in a Temple by making a Collection from Writers and Persons worthy of Credit of all the Remains and Memoires I could get of this Incomparable Monarch Whose Excellent Vertues though they often tempted the Compiler to the Liberty of a Panegyrick yet they still perswaded him to as strict an observance of Truth as is due to an History For he praises this King best who writes His Life most faithfully which was the Care and Endeavour of Thine Rich. Perrinchief MAJESTY IN MISERY OR An Imploration to the KING of KINGS MAJESTY in MISERY OR An Imploration to the KING of Kings Written by his late Majesty King CHARLES the First during His Captivity at Carisbrooke Castle Anno Dom. 1648. GREAT Monarch of the World from whose Power springs The Potency and Power of Kings Record the Royal Woe my Sufferings sings And teach my tongue that ever did confine Its faculties in Truths Seraphick Line To tract the treasons of thy foes and mine Nature and Law by thy Divine Decree The only Root of Righteous Royaltie With this dim Diadem invested me With it the sacred Scepter Purple Robe The Holy Vnction and the Royal Globe Yet am I level'd with the life of Job The fiercest Furies that do daily tread Vpon my Grief my Gray Dis-crowned head Are those that owe my Bounty for their Bread They raise a War and Christen it The Cause Whilest sacrilegious hands have best applause Plunder and Murder are the Kingdoms Laws Tyranny bears the Title of Taxation Revenge and Robbery are Reformation Oppression gains the name of Sequestration My Loyal Subjects who in this bad season Attend me by the Law of God and Reason They dare
Boy and followed His book he would make Him one day Archbishop of Canterbury Which the Child took in such disdain that He threw the Cap on the ground and trampled it under His feet with so much eagerness that He could hardly be restrained Which Passion was afterward taken by some overcurious as a presage of the ruine of Episcopacy by His Power But the event shewed it was not ominous to the Order but to the Person of the Archbishop whom in His Reign He suspended from the administration of His Office Anno 1611. In His eleventh year He was made Knight of the Garter and in the twelfth Prince Henry dying November 6. 1612. He succeeded him in the Dukedom of Cornwal and the Regalities thereof and attended his Funeral as chief Mouraer on Decemb. 7. On the 14. of February following He performed the Office of Brideman to the Princess Elizabeth His Sister who on that day was married to Frederick V. Prince Elector Palatine the gayeties of which day were afterwards attended with many fatal Cares and Expences His Childhood was blemished with a supposed Obstinacy for the weakness of His body inclining Him to retirements and the imperfection of His speech rendring discourse tedious and unpleasant He was suspected to be somewhat perverse But more age and strength fitting Him for manlike Exercises and the Publick hopes inviting Him from His Privacies He delivered the world of such fears for applying Himself to action He grew so perfect in Vaulting riding the great Horse running at the Ring shooting in Cross-bows Muskets and sometimes in great Pieces of Ordnance that if Principality had been to be the reward of Excellency in those Arts He would have had a Title to the Crown this way also being thought the best Marks-man and most graceful Manager of the great Horse in the three Kingdoms His tenacious humor He left with His retirements none being more desirous of good counsel nor any more obsequious when He found it yea too distrustful of His own Judgment which the issue of things proved always best when it was followed Anno 1616. When he was sixteen years old on Novemb. 3. He was created Prince of Wales Earl of Chester and Flint the Revenues thereof being assigned to maintain His Court which was then formed for Him And being thus advanced in Years and State it was expected that He should no longer retain the Modesty which the shades of His Privacy had accustomed Him unto but now appear as the immediate Instrument of Empire and that by Him the Favours and Honours of the Court should be derived to others But though Providence had changed all about yet it had changed nothing within Him and He thought it glory enough to be great without the diminution of others for He still permitted the Ministry of State to His Fathers Favourites which gave occasion of discourse to the Speculativi Some thought He did it to avoid the Jealousies of the Old King which were conceived to have been somewhat raised by the popularity of Prince Henry whose breast was full of forward Hopes For Young Princes are deemed of an impatient Ambition and Old ones to be too nice and tender of their Power in which though they are contented with a Successor as they must have yet are afraid of a Partner And it was supposed that therefore K. James had raised Car and Buckingham like Comets to dim the lustre of these rising Stars But these were mistaken in the nature of that King who was enclined to contract a private friendship The Duke of Lenox and the Earl of Arran in Scotland and was prodigal to the objects of it before ever he had Sons to divert his Love or raise his Fears Some that at a distance looked upon the Prince's actons ascribed them to a Narrowness of Mind and an Incapacity of Greatness while others better acquainted with the frame of His Spirit knew His prudent Modesty inclined Him to learn the Methods of Commanding by the practice of Obedience and that being of a peaceful Soul He affected not to embroil the Court and from thence the Kingdom in Factions the effects of impotent minds which He knew were dangerous to a State and destructive to that Prince who gives birth unto them that therefore He chose to wait for a certain though delayed Grandeur rather than by the Compendious way of Contrasts get a precocious Power and leave too pregnant an Example of Ruine Others conceived it the Prudence of the Father with which the Son complied who knew the true use of Favourites was to make them the objects of the People's impatience the sinks to receive the curses and anger of the Vulgar the hatred of the querulous and the envy of unsatisfied ambition which He would rather have fall upon Servants that His Son might ascend the Throne free and unburthened with the discontents of any This was the rather believed because He could dispense Honours where and when He pleased as He did to some of His own Houshold as Sir Robert Cary was made Lord Cary of Lepington Sir Thomas Howard Viscount Andover and Sir John Vaughan Lord of Molingar in Ireland Anno 1618. The evenness of His Spirit was discovered in the loss of His Mother whose death presaged as some thought by that notorious Comet which appeared Novemb. 18. before happened on March 2. Anno 1618. which He bewailed with a just measure of Grief without any affected Sorrows though She was most affectionate to Him above all her other Children and at her Funeral He would be chief Mourner The Death of the Queen was not long after followed with a sharp Sickness of the King wherein his Life seeming in danger the consequences of his Death began to be lamented Dr. Andrews then Bishop of Ely bewailed the sad condition of the Church if God should at that time determine the days of the King The Prince being then only conversant with Scotch men which made up the greatest part of His Family and were ill-affected to the Government and Worship of the Church of England Of this the King became so sensible that he made a Vow If God should please to restore his health he would so instruct the Prince in the Controversies of Religion as should secure His affections to the present establishment Which he did with so much success as he assured the Chaplains who were to wait on the Prince in Spain that He was able to moderate in any emergent disputations which yet he charged them to decline if possible At which they smiling he earnestly added that CHARLES should manage a point in Controversie with the best-studied Divine of them all Anno 1619. In his 19. Year on March 24. which was the Anniversary of King James's coming to the Crown of England He performed a Justing at White-Hall together with several of the Nobility wherein He acquitted Himself with a Bravery equal to His Dignity And on the Sunday following attending His Father to the Sermon at St. Paul's
Relations of His Gallantry when She was told of His passing through Paris She answered as it is reported That if He went to Spain for a Wife He might have had one nearer hand and saved Himself a great part of the labour Anno 1625. In the midst of these Preparations for War and Love King James died at Theobalds Sunday March 27. Anno 1625. and Prince CHARLES was immediately proclaimed at the Court-Gate King of Great Britain France and Ireland and so throughout all the Three Kingdoms with insinite Rejoycings The people expecting all the benefits of the happiest Government under Him whose private and vouthful part of Life had been so spent that it had nothing in it to be â—â—â—used and where the eager inquisitors for matter of Reproach met with no satisfaction An Argument of a solid Vertue that could hold out against all the Vices of Youth that are rendred more impetuous by Flatteries and Plenty which are contâ—nuâ—lly resident in great Courts For had any debauchery polluted His earlier days it had been onblished by those who in scarcity of just Accusations did invent unimaginable Calumnies Nor could it have been hid for in a great Fortune notâ—ing is concealed but Curiosity opens the Closeâ—â—â—nd Bed chambers especially of Princes and discovers their closest retirements exposing all their Actions to Fame and Censure Nor did the King deceive their hopes they being the happiest people under the Sun while He was undistuibed in the administration of Justice His first publick Act was the Celebrating His Fathers Funeral whereat He Himself was Chief Mourner contrary to the Practice of His Royal Predecessors and not conformable to the Ceremonies of State Either preferring Piety to an unnatural Grandeur or urged by some secret Decree of Providence that in all the ruines of His Family He should drink the greatest draught of Tears or His Spirit presaging the Troubles of the Throne He would hallow the Ascent to it by a pious act of Grief When He had pay'd that debt to His deceased Father He next provided for Posterity and therefore hastened the coming over of His dearest Consort Whom the Duke of Chevereux had in His Name espoused at the Church of Nostre-Dame in Paris and He receiving Her at Dover the next day after Trinity-Sunday at Canterbury began His Conjugal Embraces A Lady of most excellent Endowments who assumed to Her self nothing in His Good Fortune but the Joy and in His Evil bore an equal share for She reverenced Him not his Greatness Thus having dispatched the affairs of His Family He applyes Himself to those of His Kingdoms which too much Felicity had made unmanageable by a moderate Government And He seemed not so much to ascend a Throne as enter upon a Theatre to wrestle with all the difficulties of a corrupted State whose long Peace had softned almost all the Nobless into Court-pleasures and made the Commons insolent by a great Plenty The Rites and Discipline of Religion had been blotted out by a long and uninterrupted Prosperity and Factions crept from the Church into the Senate which were made use of by those that endeavoured the alteration of Government and the Resolves of that Council were the dictates of some heady Demagogues who fed the Vulgar with hopes of Novelty under the name of Liberty so that the King could not endure their Vices nor they His Vertues whence came all the Obstructions to His Designs for Glory and the Publick good The Treasury had been exhausted to satiate the unquiet and greedy Scots and the people were taught not to supply it unless they were bribed with the blood of some Minister of State or some more advantages for Licentiousness Each of these single would have ennobled the Care of an Ordinary Prudence to have weathered out but when all these conspired with the traitorous Projects of men of unbounded and unlawful hopes they took from Him His Peace and that which the World calls Happiness but yet they made Him Great and affording Exercises for His most excellent Abilities rendred Him Glorious The different states of these Difficulties when like Clouds they were gathering together and when they descended in showres of Blood divide the King's Reign into two parts The first could not be esteemed dayes of Peace but an Immunity from Civil War The other was when He was concluded by that Fatal Necessity either to part with his Dignity and expose His Subjects to the injuries of numerous Tyrants or else to exceed the calmer temper of His peacefull Soul and make use of those necessary Arms whereby He might hope to divert if possible the Ruine of Church and State which He saw in projection In the first Part He had no Wars at home but what was in the Houses of Parliament which though their first Institution designed for the production of just Counsels and assistances of Government yet through the just Indignation of Heaven and the practises of some unquiet and seditious persons became the wombs wherein were first conceived and formed those monstrous Confusions which destroyed their own Liberty caused our Miseries and the King's Afflictions His First Parliament began June 18. At the opening of which the King acquainted them with the necessity of Supplies for the War with Spain which they importunately had through His Mediation engaged His Father in and made it as hereditary to Him as the Crown His Eloquence gave powerful Reasons for speedy and large summs of Money did also audit to them the several disbursements relating both to the Army and Navy that He might remove all Jealousies of mis-imployment and give them notice how well He understood the Office He had newly entred upon and how to be a faithful Steward of the Publick Treasure But the Projectors of the alteration of Government brought into debate two Petitions one for Religion the other for Grievances formed in King James's time which delayed the Succours and increased the Necessities which at last they answered but with two Subsidies too poor a stock to furnish an Army with yet was kindly accepted in expectation of more at the next Session For the Infection seising upon London the Parliament was adjourned till August when they were to meet at Oxford and at that time He passed such Acts as were presented to Him At the next Session He gave a complying and satisfactory answer to all their Petitions and expected a Retribution in larger Subsidies towards the Spanish War But in stead of these there were high and furious debates of Grievances consultations to form and publish Remonstrances Accusations of the Duke of Buckingham Which the King esteeming as reproaches of His Government and assaults upon Monarchy dissolves that Aslembly hoping to find one of a less cholerick complexion after His Coronation This inauspicious Meeting drew aster it another Mischief the Miscarriage of the Designs upon Spain For the supplies of Money being scanty and slow the Fleet could not go forth till October 8. an unseasonable time in the British Seas
and their first contest was with Winds and Tempests which destroying some seattered all the Ships When they met a more dangerous storm fell among the Soldiers and Seamen where small Pay caused less Discipline and a contempt of their General the Lord Wimbleton rendred the attempt upon Cades vain and fruitless This was followed by a Contagion to which some conceive discontented minds make the bodies of men more obnoxious in the Navy which forced it home more empty of Men and less of Reputation The Infection decreasing at London the King performed the Solemnities of His Coronation February 2. with some alterations from those of His Predecessors for in the Civil He omitted the usual Parade of Riding from the Tower through the City to White-Hall to save the Expences that Pomp required for more noble undertakings In the Spiritual there was restored a Clause in the Prayers which had been pretermitted since Henry VI. and was this Let Him obtain favour for this People like Aaron in the Tabernacle Elisha in the waters Zacharias in the Temple give Him Peter 's Key of Discipline Paul 's Doctrine Which though more agreeing to the Principles of Protestantism which acknowledgeth the Power of Princes in their Churches and was therefore omitted in the times of Popery yet was quarrelled at by the Factious party who take advantages of Calumny and Sedition from good as well as bad circumstances and condemned as a new invention of Bishop Laud and made use of to defame both the King and him After this He began a Second Parliament February 2. wherein the Commons voted Him Four Subsidies but the Demagogues intended them as the price of the Duke of Buckingham's blood whom Mr. Cooke and Dr. Turner with so much bitterness inveighed against as passing the modesty of their former dissimulation they taxed the King's Government Sir Dudley Digges Sir John Elliot and others carried up Articles against him to the Lord's House in which to make the Faction more sport the Duke and the Earl of Bristol did mutually impeach each other By these contrasts the Parliament were so highly heated that the Faction thought it fit time to put a Remonstrance in the forge which according to their manner was to be a publick Invective against the Government But the King having notice of it dissolves the Parliament June 18. Anno 1626. and the Bill for the Subsidies never passed This misunderstanding at home produced another War abroad For the King of France taking advantage of these our Domestick embroilments begins a War upon us and seiseth upon the English Merchant Ships in the River of Bourdeaux His pretence was because the King had sent back all the French Servants of the Queen whose insolencies had been intolerable But the world saw the vanity of this pretext in the Example of Lewis himself who had in the like manner dimitted the Spanish attendants of his own Queen and that truly the unhappy Counsels in Parliament had exposed this Just Prince to foreign injuries Which He magnanimously endeavoured to revenge and to recover the goods of His abused Subjects and therefore sent the Fleet designed for Justice upon Spain to seek it first in France But the want of Money made the Preparations slow and therefore the Navy putting out late in the year was by Storms forced to desist the enterprize So that what was the effect only of the malice of His Enemies was imputed by some to a secret Decree of Heaven which obstructed His just undertakings for Glory Anno 1627. The next year the King quickned by the Petitions of the Rochellers who now sued for His Protection as well as by the Justice of His own Cause more early prosecuted His Counsels and sent the Duke of Buckingham to attach the Isle of Rhee which though alarmed to a greater strength by the last year's vain attempt yet had now submitted to the English Valour had not the Duke managed that War more with the Gayeties of a Courtier than the Arts of a Souldier And when it was wisdom to forsake those attempts which former neglects had made impossible being too greedy of Honour and to avoid the imputation on of fear in a safe retreat he loaded his overthrow with a new Ignominy and an heavier loss of men the common fate of those Who seek for glory in the parcels lose it in the gross Which was contrary to the temper of his Master who was so tender of humane blood that therefore He raised no Wars but found them and thought it an opprobrious bargain to purchase the fruitless Laurels or the empty name of Honour with the lives of men but where the Publick Safety required the hazard and loss of some particulars This Expedition being so unhappy and the Miseries of Rochel making them importunate for the King's Assistance His Compassionate Soul was desirous to remove their Dangers but was restrained by that necessitous condition the Faction had concluded Him under To free Himself from which that He might deliver the oppressed He doth pawn His own Lands for 120000 pounds to the City and borrows 30000 pounds more of the East-India Company but this was yet too narrow a Foundation to support the charges of the Fleet and no way so natural to get adequate supplies as by a Parliament which He therefore summons to meet March 17 intending to use all Methods of Complacency to unite the Subjects Affections to Himself Which in the beginning proved successful for the modesty of the Subjects strove with the Piety of the King and both Interests contended to oblige that they might be obliged The Parliament granted the King Anno 1628. five Subsidies and He freely granted their Petition of Right the greatest Condescension that ever any King made wherein He seemed to submit the Royal Scepter to the Popular Fasces and to have given Satisfaction even to Supererogation These auspicious beginnings though full of Joy both to Prince and People were matter of envy to the Faction and therefore to form new Discontents and Jealousies the Demagogues perswaded the Houses that the King 's Grant of their Petition extended beyond their own Hopes and the Limits themselves had set and what He had expresly mentioned and cautioned even to the taking away His Right to Tonnage and Poundage Besides this they were again hammering a Remonstrance to reproach Him and His Ministers of male-administration Which Ingratitude He being not able to endure on June 26. adjourns the Parliament till Octob. 20. and afterward by Proclamation till Jan. 20. following In the interim the King hastens to send succours to Rochel and though the General the Duke of Buckingham was at Portsmouth Assassinated by Felton armed as he professed with the publick hatred yet the Preparations were not slackned the King by His personal industry doing more to the necessary furnishing of the Fleet in ten or twelve dayes than the Duke had done in so many months before But in the mean while Rochel was barricadoed to an impossibility of Relief
frame as must tend to a Change There were no Witnesses and the Defendant denying what the Appellant affirmed the Tryal was thought must be by Duel In order to which the King grants a Commission for a Court-Marshal where though the presumptions of Ramsey's guilt were more heightned yet the King hinders any further process by Combat which is doubted whether it be lawfull either thinking none so foolish as to strive for Empire which He found so full of Trouble or knowing that Magistracy being the sole Gift of Heaven it was vain to commit a crime in hope of enjoying it or in fear of losing it which was the Principle upon which Excellent Princes have neglected the diligent Inquisition of Conspiracies and fatally continues Hamilton in that favour as did enable him afterwards more falsly to act that Treason of which he was then accused Anno 1632. Some Tumults in Ireland shewed a defect in that Government which made the King send over as Deputy thither the Lord Wentworth a most accomplished Person in affairs of Rule of great Abilities equal to a Minister of State The King 's choice of him he soon justified by reducing that tumultuary people to such a condition of Peace and security as it had never been since its first annexion to this Crown and made it pay for the Charges of its own Government which before was deducted out of the English Treasury their Peace and Laws now opening accesses for Plenty This enjoyment of Peace and Plenty through all the King's Dominions made Him mindfull of employing some fruits of it to the Honour of that God that caused it and not to let so great a Prosperity wholly corrupt the minds of men to a neglect of Religion which is usual He shewed His own Zeal for the Ornaments of it and spent part of His Treasure towards the repair of St. Paul's Church and by His Example Admonitions and Commands drew many of His Subjects to a Contribution for it and had restored it to its primitive lustre and firmness adorned it to a magnificence equall with the Structure which is supposed the goodliest in the Christian World had not the Malice of His Enemies forced Him to Arms mingled His Morter with the blood of innocent people and sacrilegiously diverted all the Treasure and Materials gathered for this pious design to maintain an impious and unjust War and afterwards to dishonour His Cares for Religion they barbarously made it a Stable for their Horse and Quarters for their unhallowed Foot Anno 1633. Some Reasons of State drew the King from London May 13. to receive the Imperial Crown of Scotland Himself professed that He had no great Stomach to the Journey nor delight in the Nation being a Race of men that under the Scheme of an honest animosity and specious plain-dealing were most perfidious A full Character of their great Movers Yet as He had been nobly treated all along His Journey by the English Nobility so was He there magnificently received and crowned at Edinburgh June 10. But the King soon found all those Caresses false For the Nobility and Laick Patrons could not concoct His Revocation though legal and innocent of such things as had been stoln from the Crown during His Father's Minority with a Commission for Surrendry of Superiorities and Tithes to be retaken from the King by the present Occupants who could as then pretend no other Title than the unjust usurpation of their Ancestors on such conditions as might bring some Profit to the Crown to which they justly belonged some Augmentation to the Clergy and far more ease and benefit to the Common People whom by advantage of those illegal Tenures they oppressed with a most bitter Vassalage This Act of His Majesty being so full of equity and publick good those whose greatness was builded upon Injustice did not bare-facedly oppose it but endeavoured to hinder that and all the other designs of Peace and Order by opposing in the Parliament next after the Coronation the Act of Ratification of all those Laws which King James had made in that Nation for the better regulating the affairs of that Church both as to the Government and Worship of it This was highly opposed by such as were sensible of their diminution by a legal restitution of their unrighteous Possessions And although the King carried it by the major part of Voices yet to prevent their own fires with the publick Ruine they did most assiduously slander it among the People as the abetting of Popery and the betraying their Spiritual Liberty to the Romish yoke These Calumnies received more credit by the King's Order for a more decent and Reverend Worship of God at His Royal Chappel at Edinburgh conformably to the English Usage Their noise grew lowder by the Concent of their party of Malecontents in England who also took advantage to diffuse their poison from the King's Book of Sports which King JAMES had in his time published in Lancashire and was now ratified by King CHARLES for a more universal Observance The Occasion of which was the Apostasie of many to Popery whose Doctrines and Practices are more indulgent to the licentious through the rigid opinion of some Preachers who equall'd all Recreations on the Sabbath as they call'd it to the most prodigious transgressions On the contrary some of the ignorant Teachers had perverted many to down-right Judaism by the consequence of so strict an Observance of the Sabbath And some over-busie Justices of Peace had suppressed all the Ancient Feasts of the Dedications of Churches The King therefore intended by this edict to obstruct the success of the Enemies on both sides and to free His People from the yoke of this Superstition But such is the weakness of Humane Prudence that the Remedies it applies to one Inconvenience are pregnant of another and whereas the Generality of men seldom do good but as necessitated by Law when Liberty is indulged all things are soon filled with Disorder and Confusion And so it happened in this that the Vulgar abusing the King's Liberty which was no more than is granted in other Protestant Churches and committing many undecencies made many well-temper'd Spirits too capable and credulous of those importunate Calumnies of the Faction that His Majesty was not well-affected to Religion Anno 1634. The boldness of the Pickeroons Turks and Dunkirk-Pirates infesting our Coasts damaging our Traffique the usurpation of the Holland Fishers on the King's Dominion in the Narrow Seas and His Right disputed in a Tract by the Learned Grotius call the King 's next Cares for His own Honour and the People's Safety But the Remedy appeared exceeding difficult the furnishing of a Navy for so honourable an undertaking being too heavy a burden for His Exchequer which although not emptied by any luxuriant Feasts nor profusely wasted on some prodigal and unthrifty Favourite nor lavished on ambitious designs from all which destructions of Treasure no King was more free was but just sufficient for ordinary and
necessary Expences of State and Majesty And though it was most just for Him to expect the Peoples Contribution to their own Safety who were never richer than now nor had they ever more Security for their riches than they now had by His Concessions of Liberty yet knowing how powerfull the Faction alwayes was to disturb the Counsels of Parliament He feared that from their Proceedings the Common Enemies would be incouraged as formerly to higher Insolencies and the envious Demagogues would contemn their own safety to ruine His Honour He also accounted it a great unhappiness to be necessitated to maintain His State by extraordinary wayes and therefore refused to renew Privy Seals and Loans the use of which He debarred Himself of in granting the Petition of Right Therefore consults His Atturney-General Noy whether the Prerogative had yet any thing left to save an unwilling people Noy acquaints Him with Ancient Precedents of raising a Tax upon the Nation for setting forth a Navie in case of danger and assures Him of the Legality of the way in proceeding by Writs to that effect Which Counsel being embraced there were Writs directed to the several Counties for such a Contribution that in the whole might build furnish and maintain 47 Ships for the safety of the Kingdom And by these the King soon secured and calmed the Seas but the Faction endeavoured to raise a Tempest at Land Anno 1635. They complained of Invasions on their Spiritual Liberties because the Bishops endeavoured in these years to reduce the Ceremonies of the Church to their primitive Observance of which a long Prosperity had made men negligent and time had done that to the Spiritual Body which it doth to the Natural daily amassed those Corruptions which at length will stand in need of cure Therefore when they took this proper Method of reforming a corrupted State in bringing things back to their Original Institution both His Majesty and they were defamed with designs of Popery This Tax of Ship-money was pretended a breach to their Civil Liberties and contrary to Law because not laid by a Parliament Therefore those who sought the People's favour to alter the present Government by seeming the singular Patrons of their Rights refused to pay the Tax Anno 1636. and stood it out to a Tryal at Law The Just Prince declined not the Tryal and permitted Monarchy and Liberty to plead at the same Bar. All the Judges of the Land did justifie by their Subscriptions that it was legal for the King to levy such a Tax and their Subscriptions were enrolled in all the Courts of Westminster-Hall And when it came to be argued in the Exchequer-Chamber ten of them absolutely declared for it only two Crooke and Hutton openly dissented from that opinion to which they had formerly subscribed not without the ignominy of Levity unbeseeming their places And as the King was thus victorious in the Law so was He at Sea and having curbed the Pirates He also reduced the Hollanders to a precarious use of His Seas Amidst all these Difficulties and Calumnies the King hitherto had so governed that sober men could not pray for nor Heaven grant in Mercy to a People any greater Happiness than what His Reign did afford The British Empire never more flourished with Magnificent Edifices the Trade of the Nation had brought the wealth of the Indies home to our doors Learning and all good Sciences were so cherished that they grew to Admiration and many Arts of the Ancients buried and forgotten by time were revived again No Subjects under the Sun richer and which was the effect of that none prouder Security increased the Husband-mans stock and Justice preserved his Life none being condemned as to Life but by the lawfull Verdict of those of an equal Condition the Jury of his Peers The poor might Reverence but needed not Fear the Great and the Great though he might despise yet could not injure his more obscure Neighbour And all things were so administred that they seemed to conspire to the Publick good except that they made our Happiness too much the cause of all Civil Commotions and brought our Felicity to that height that by the necessity of humane nature which hath placed all things in motion it must necessarily decline And God provoked by our sins did no longer restrain and obstruct the arts and fury of some wicked men who contemning their present certain enjoyments hoped for more wicked acquisitions in publick Troubles to overwhelm every part of the King's Dominions with a deluge of Blood and Misery and to commence that War which as it was horrid with much slaughter so it was memorable with the Experiences of His Majesties Vertues Confusions like Winds from every Coast at once assaulting and trying His Righteous Soul The first Storm arose from the North and the flame first broke out in Scotland where those Lords who feared they should lose their spoils of Religion and Majesty took all occasions to hasten the publick Misery which at last most heavily lay upon their Country the hands they had strengthened and instructed to fight against their Prince laying a more unsupportable slavery upon them than their most impious Slanders could form in the imaginations of the credulous that they might fear from the King by calumniating the King's Government raising fears of Tyranny and Idolatry forming and spreading seditious Libels The Author or at least the Abettor of one of which was found to be the Lord Balmerino a Traytor by nature being the Son of one who had before merited death for his Treasons to King James yet found that mercy from him as the Son now did from King Charles to have his Life and Estate continued after condemnation Yet this perfidious man interpreted the King's Clemency for his own Vertue and he that had dared such a Crime could not be changed by the Pardon of it and as if he had rather received an Injury than Life he was the most active in the approaching Rebellion Anno 1637. For the Rabble that delights in Tumults were fitted by this and other Boutefeus for any occasion of contemning the King's Authority though His designs that were thus displeasing to the Nobless were evidently for the benefit of the Populacy and at last took fire from the Liturgy something differing from ours lest a full consent might argue a dependency upon the Church of England which some Scotish Bishops had composed and presented to the King for the use of their Church which the King who was desirous that those who were united under His Command might not be divided in Worship confirmed and appointed to be first read July 13. at Edinburgh a City always pregnant with suspicions and false rumours But it was entertained with all the instruments of Fury that were present to a debauched multitude for they flung cudgels and sticks at the Dean of Edinburgh while he was performing his Office and after that was done re-inforc'd their assault upon the Bishops whom the
Earls of Roxbrough and Traquaire pretended to protect who indured some affronts that their Patience might provoke a greater rage in the Multitude which a vigorous punishment had easily extinguish'd For they that are fierce in a croud being singled through their particular fears become obedient And that rabble that talks high against the determinations of their Prince when danger from the Laws is within their ken distrust their companions and return to subjection But it soon appeared that this was not the bare effort of a mutinous Multitude but a long-formed Conspiracy and to this Multitude whose present terrour was great yet would have been contemptible in a short space there appeared Parties to head them of several Orders Who presently digested their Partisans into several Tables and concocted this Mutiny into a formal Rebellion To prosecute which they mutually obliged themselves and the whole Nation in a Covenant to extirpate Episcopacy and whatsoever they pleased to brand with the odious names of Heresie and Superstition and to defend each other against all Persons not excepting the King To reduce this people to more peaceful Practices the King sends Marquess Hamilton one who being caressed by His Majesties Favour had risen to such a degree of wealth and greatness that now he dreamed of nothing less than Empire to bring his power to perfection at least to be Monarch of Scotland to which he had some pretensions by his birth as His Commissioner Who with a species of Loyalty dissembled that pleasure which he took in the opposition of the Covenanters whose first motions were secretly directed by his counsels and those of his dependents Traquaire and Roxbrough for all his Allies were of that party contrary to the custom of that Country where all the Members of a Family espouse the part of their Head though in the utmost danger and his Mother rid armed with Pistols at her Saddle-bow for defence of the Covenant By his actings there new seeds of Discontents and War were daily sown and his oppositions so faint that he rather encreased than allayed their fury By several returns to His Majesty for new Instructions he gave time to the Rebels to consolidate their Conspiracy to call home their Exiles of Poverty that were in foreign Armies and provide Arms for open Force By his false representations of the state of things he induced the King to temporize with the too-potent Corruption of that Nation an artifice King JAMES had sometimes practised and by granting their desires to make them sensible of the evils which would flow from their own counsels Therefore the King gave Order for revoking the Liturgy the High-Commission the Book of Canons and the Five Articles of Perth But the Covenanters were more insolent by these Concessions because they had gotten that by unlawful courses and unjust force which Modesty and Submission had never obtained and imputing these Grants to the King's Weakness not his Goodness they proceeded to bolder Attempts Indicted an Assembly without Him in which they abolished Episcopacy excommunicated the Bishops and all that adhered to them Afterwards they seised upon the King's Revenue surprised His Forts and Castles and at last put themselves into Arms. Provoked with these Injuries the King amasses a gallant Army in which was a very great appearance of Lords and Gentlemen and with these marches and incamps within two miles of Berwick within sight of the Enemy But their present Condition being such as could endure neither War nor Peace they endeavoured to dissipate that Army which they could not overthrow by a pretence to a Pacification For which they petition'd the King who yielded unto it out of His innate tenderness of His Subjects Blood So an Accord was made June 17. Anno 1639. and the King disbands His Army expecting the Scots should do the like according to the Articles of Agreement But they being delivered from Fear would not be restrained by Shame from breaking their Faith For no sooner had the King disbanded but they protested against the Pacification printed many false Copies of it that might represent it dishonourable to the King retained their Officers in pay changed the old Form of holding Parliaments invaded the Prerogatives of the Crown and solicited the French King for an aid of men and money This perfidious abuse of His Majesty's Clemency made those that judge of Counsels by the Issue to censure the King's Facility Some wondred how He could imagine there would be any Moderation in so corrupt a Generation of men and that they who had broken the Peace out of a desire of War should now lay aside their Arms out of a love to Quiet That there would be always the same causes to the Scots of disturbing England and opposing Government their unquiet nature and Covetousness therefore unless some strong impression made them either unable or unwilling to distract our quiet the King was to look for a speedy return of their Injuries Others attributed the Accord to the King's sense that some eminent Officers in His own Camp were polluted with Counsels not different from the Covenanters and that Hamilton His Admiral had betrayed the seasons of fighting by riding quietly in the Forth of Edinburgh and had secret Conference with His Mother the great Nurse of the Covenant on Ship-board But most referred it to the King 's innate tenderness of His Subjects Blood and to His Prudence not to defile His Glory with the overthrow which seemed probable of a contemptible Enemy where the gains of the Victory could not balance the hazards of attempting it Anno 1640. While men thus discourse of the Scots Perfidiousness the King prepares for another Army and in order thereto calls a Parliament in Ireland and another in England for assistances against the Rebels in Scotland The Irish granted Money to raise and pay 8000 men in Arms and furnish them with Ammunition Yet this Example with the King's account of the Injuries done to Him and this Nation by the Scots and his promise of for ever acquitting them of Ship-money if now they would freely assist Him prevailed nothing upon the English Parliament whom the Faction drew aside to other Counsels And when the King sent Sir Henry Vane to re-mind them of His desires and to demand Twelve Subsidies yet to accept of Six he industriously as was collected from His own and His Sons following practices insisted upon the Twelve without insinuation of the lesser quantity His Majesty would be contented with which gave such an opportunity and matter for seditious Harangues that the House was so exasperated as that they were about to Remonstrate against the War with Scotland To prevent this ominous effect of the falseness of His Servant the King was forced to dissolve the Parliament May 5. yet continued the Convocation which granted Him 4 s. in the pound for all their Ecclesiastical Promotions But the Laiety that in the House had not time to declame against His Majesties Proceedings did it without doors for being
dispersed to their homes they filled all places with suspicious Rumours and high Discontents and in Southwark there was an open Mutiny began which was not pacified without much danger and the Execution of the principal Leaders The King thus betrayed defamed and deserted by those who should have considered that in His Honour their Safety was embarqued though He had no less cause to fear secret Conspiracies at Home which were more dangerous because obscure than the Scots publick Hostility yet vigorously prosecuted His undertaking and raised a sufficient Army but could not do it with equal speed to His Enemies who had soon re-united their dispersed Forces and incouraged by the Faction with whom they held Intelligence in England contented not themselves to stand upon the defence but invaded us and advanced so far before all the King's Army could be gathered together that they gave a defeat to a Party of it ere the Rear could be brought up by the Earl of Strafford who was appointed General or the King could come to encourage them with His Presence He was no sooner arrived at His Army but there followed Him from some English Lords a Petition conformable to the Scotch Remonstrance which they called the Intentions of the Army So that His Majesty might justly fear some attempts in the South while He was thus defending Himself from the Northern injuries The King answered the Petitioners That before their Petition came He had resolved to summon all the Peers to consult what would be most for the Safety of the Nation and His own Honour Who accordingly met Sept. 24. Where it was determined that a Parliament should be called to meet Nov. 3. and in the mean time a Cessation should be made with the Scots with whom some Commissioners from the Parliament should Treat Novemb. 3. began that Fatal Parliament which was so transported by the Arts of some unquiet persons that they dishonoured the name and hopes of a Parliament ingulfed the Nation in a Sea of Blood ruined the King and betrayed all their own Priviledges and the People's Liberty into the power of a Phanatick and perfidious Army And although His Majesty could not hope to find them moderate yet He endeavoured to make them so telling them at their meeting that He was resolved to put Himself freely upon the Affections of His English Subjects that He would satisfie all their just Grievances and not leave to malice it self a shadow to doubt of His desire to make this a glorious and flourishing Kingdom He commended to their care the chasing out of the Rebels the Provisions of His own Army and the Relief of the oppressed Northern Counties But the Malignity of some few and the Iguorance of more employed that Assembly in other matters First In purging their House of all such as they conceived would not comply with their destructive enterprises and for such men they either found some fault with their Elections or made them Criminals in some publick Grievance though others of a deeper guilt they kept among them that their Offences might make them obnoxious to their power and obsequious to their commands Then with composed Harangues they declaimed upon the publick Grievances and reckoned up casual Misfortunes amongst designed Abuses of Government every way raising up Contumelies against the present Power and that which was fullest of Detraction and Envy was applauded as most pregnant with Liberty Thus pretending several Injuries had been done to the People they raised the Multitude to hopes of an unimaginable Liberty and a discontent with the present Government After this they set free all the Martyrs of Sedition that for their malignant Libels had been imprisoned and three of them were conducted through London with such a company of people adorned with Rosemary and Bays as it seemed a Triumph over Justice and those Tribunals that sentenced them Then they fell upon all the chief Ministers of State they impeached the Earl of Strafford Lord Lieutenant of Ireland after him the Archbishop of Canterbury the Lord Finch Keeper of the Great Seal the Judges that according to their Oath had determined Ship-money legal and others some of which fled those that were found were clapt in Prison so that the King was soon despoiled of those that were able or faithful to give Him Counsel and others terrified in their Ministery to Him While the Factious thus led the House their Partisans without by their Instructions formed Petitions against the Government in Church and State to which they seduced the ignorant Rabble in the City and several Counties to subscribe and in a tumultuous manner to present them to their Patriots Who being animated by the success of their Arts fell to draw up a Bill for Triennial Parliaments wherein the Power of calling that great Council of the Nation was upon refusal of the King and the neglect of others devolved upon Constables Which profanation of Majesty though the King disswaded them from yet they persisted in and He passed it Anno 1641. After five Months time for so long a space they took to rake up Matter and Witnesses to justifie their accusation and to give leisure to the Court for Overtures of gainful Offices to the great Sticklers against him which not appearing the Earl of Strafford is brought to his Trial in Westminster-Hall before the Lords as his Judges the King Queen and Prince sitting behind a Curtain in an adjoining Gallery and round about the Court stood the Commons His Accusers and Witnesses were English Scotch and Irish and indeed so brave a Person could not be ruined but by the pretended hatred of the whole Empire The English were such as envied his Vertues and greatness in the King's Favour The Scotch because they knew his Prudence able to counter-work their Frauds discover their impudent Cheats and his wise management to overthrow their Force The Irish hatred arose from his just and necessary Severity in his Government whereby he had reduced them from so great a Barbarousness that was impatient of Peace to a Civility that was fertile of Plenty and by Artifices Husbandry and Commerce had rendred that tumultuary Nation so rich that they were now able to repay to the English Treasury those great Debts which their former Troubles and Commotions had contracted Although those of this Nation were Papists and sworn Enemies both of the English name and State and were even then practising and meditating their Rebellion which they hoped more easie when so wise a Governour was removed and so prone enough of themselves to the Crime yet were they much caressed by the Faction that these in the name of the whole Kingdom should press the Earl with envy to the Grave His Charge consisted of Twenty eight Articles that their number might cover their want of Evidence To all which the Lieutenant whose Patience was not overcome nor his nature changed by the Reproaches of his Accusers answers with so brave a Presence of Spirit such firm Reasons and so clear an
Arts of the Irish Rebels who to dishearten the English from any resistance bragged that the Queen was with their Army That the King would come amongst them with Auxiliary Forces That they did but maintain His Cause against the Puritans That they had the Kings Commission for what they did shewing indeed a Patent that themselves had drawn but thereto was affixed an Old broad Seal that had been taken from an obsolete Patent out of Farnham Abby by one Plunckett in the presence of many of their Lords and Priests as was afterwards attested by the Confession of many That the Scots were in confederacy with them to beget a faith of which they abstained from the lives and fortunes of those of that Nation among them On the other side to encourage the Natives of their own party they produce fictitious Letters wherein they were informed from England that the Parliament had passed an Act that all the Irish should be compelled to the Protestant Worship that for the first offence they should forfeit all their Goods for the second their Estates and for the third their Lives Besides they present them with the hopes of Liberty That the English Yoke should be shaken off that they would have a King of their own Nation and that the Goods and Estates of the English should be divided among the Natives And with these hopes of Spoil and Liberty the Irish were driven to such a Fury that they committed so many horrid and barbarous acts as scarce ever any Age or People were guilty of In the mean while nothing was done for the relief of the poor English there but only some Votes passed against the Rebels till the King returned to London which was about the end of November where He with the Queen and the Prince were magnificently feasted by the Citizens and the Chief of them afterwards by Him at Hampton-Court For he never neglected any honest Arts to gain His Peoples love to which they were naturally prone enough had not His Enemies methods and impulses depraved their Genius But this much troubled the Faction who envied that Reverence to Majesty in others which was not in themselves and they endeavoured to make these loves short and unhappy for they discountenanced the prime advancers of this Honour to the King and were more eager to render Him odious For having gotten a Guard about them they likewise insinuated into the people dangerous apprehensions as the cause of that Guard and every day grew more nice and jealous of their Priviledges and Power The King's advices to more tenderness of His Prerogative or His Advertisements of the scandalous Speeches that were uttered in their House they interpret as encroachments upon their Grandeur and upbraided the King for them in their Petitions to Him But their greatest effort upon Majesty was the Remonstrance after which they took all occasions to magnifie the apprehensions of those Fears which they had falsly pretended to in it This the Faction had before formed and now brought into the House of Commons where it found a strong opposition by those wise men that were tender of the publick Peace and Common Good though those who preferred their Private to the General Interest and every one that was short-sighted and improvident for the future were so fierce for it that the Debates were continued all night till ten a clock the next morning so that many of the more aged and persons of best fortunes not accustomed to such watchings were wearied out and many others not daring to provoke the Faction in this their grand Design left the House so that at last they carried it yet but by eleven Votes Which they presented with a Petition to take away the Votes of Bishops in the House of Lords and the Ceremonies in the Church and to remove those Persons from His Trust which they could not confide in yet named none but only accused all under the name of a Malignant Popish Party Which they had no sooner delivered than they caused it to be published in Print To which the King answers in another publick Declaration but so much to the discontent of the Demagogues to find their Methods of Ruine so fully discovered as they were in His Majesties Answer that they had recourse to their former sovereign Remedy which sober men accounted a crime and an indignity to Government the Tumults of the Rabble Who in great numbers and much confusion came up to Westminster some crying out against Bishops others belching their fury against the Liturgy and a third party roaring that the Power of the Militia should be taken out of the King's hands To their Clamours they added rude Affronts to those Lords whom their Leaders had taught them to hate and especially to the Bishops at their going in or coming out of the House and afterwards drawing up to White-Hall they appeared so insolent as it was evident they wanted only some to begin for there were enough to prosecute an Assault upon the King in His own Palace The Bishops thus rudely excluded from their Right and Liberty of coming to the Parliament Twelve of them afterwards protest against the Proceedings of it during their so violent Exclusion Which Protestation the Commons presently accused of High Treason and caused their Commitment to the Tower where they continued them till the Bill against their Votes in the Lords House was past that they might not produce their Reasons for their Rights and against the Injustice offered unto them and then afterwards released them The King also saw it necessary to take a Guard of such Gentlemen as offered their Service for His Safety and to prevent the prophaning of Majesty by the rude fury of the People who used to make their Addresses acceptable at Westminster by offering in their passage some base Affronts at White-Hall But when the terrour of this Guard had reduced them to some less degree of Impudency they then instructed by their Heads laboured to make it more unsafe to the King by seeking to raise the Rage and Jealousie of the whole City against Him For at midnight there were cries out in the Street that all People should arise to their defence for the King with His Papists were coming to fire the City and cut their throats in their beds Than which though nothing was more false yet it found the effects of truth and the People by such Alarms being terrified from sleep the impressions of those nightly fears lay long upon their Spirits in the day and filled them almost with Madness The King therefore not alwaies to incourage these Violences with Patience but at last by a course of Justice to take off those whom He had found to be the Authors of these destructive Counsels the grand Movers of these Seditious practices and which was more the Inviters of a Foreign Force the Scotch Army into this Nation commands His Atturney General to accuse Five Members of the House of Commous and one of the Lords upon Articles of
High Treason to be tried according to the Laws of the Land and He also sends some other Officers to seal up their Trunks and Cabinets in their several Lodgings and to secure their Persons This being related to the House of Commons wherein the Faction was now grown more powerful and with whom did joyn many men of Integrity in this Occurrence being too careful of the Priviledges of their House which yet secure none of the Members against Justice for Murder Felony or Treason they were so far from admitting the King's Charge against them that they accused the King of breach of Priviledge and Vote all those guilty of Enmity to the Common-wealth that shall obey the King in any of His Commands concerning them This Obstruction of Justice so far moved the King together with the Advice of some of His Council that were also of the House of Commons as also an hope of rooting up the Faction this way that none through the hope of Concealment should be incouraged to conspire the publick Ruine that He Himself with about an hundred Lords and Gentlemen and their followers went to the House of Commons Where commanding His Attendants to move no further than the Stairs to offer no violence nor return any uncivil language to any although provoked Himself with the Paltzgrave only enters the House and demands that the Incendiaries might be delivered into His hands with whom He promises to deal no otherwise than according to the Law But they whom he sought being before informed as it is reported of the King 's coming by the secret Intelligence of Marquess Hamilton and a Court Lady who having lost the Confluence of Servants with her Beauty sought now to prevent a solitude by politick ministeries had forsook the place and withdrawn themselves into the Sanctuary of the City Wherefore the King having renewed His Charge without injury to any immediately departs But the Faction would not let Him so rest but prosecuted this attempt of His with all the Clamours that they possibly could raise spread the sparks of Dissention far and wide make the common people mad with Fears and Distractions stir up some in several Counties to bring Petitions for the impeached Members and their Violated Priviledges and at last prepare an armed Rabble disposed into Order to bring the accused Demagogues to the House from their Coverts in London This coming to the knowledge of the King although many Gallant and faithful Persons proffered their Service by mingling with the Rout or by being as Spectators to curb any Insolencies that should be attempted on Him yet was He resolved to withdraw Himself with the Queen and their Children to Windsor that He might permit their Fury to languish when it had no opposition and to give time for their jealousies and rumours to wax old and perish For the first Indignation of a mutinous Multitude is most fierce and a small delay breaks their consent and Majesty would have a greater Reverence if any at a distance The King's Wisdom was perceived by His Enemies and therefore to counterwork it and not to let the people sleep without fear lest they should come to be sober and return to the love of Obedience strange reports were every day brought of dangers from the King That troops of Papists were gathered about Kingston upon the Thames where the County Magazine was lodged under the Command of the Lord George Digby who was then famed to be a Papist though at that time he was an elegant Assertor of the Protestant Faith and Col. Lunsford who was characterised to be of so monstrous an appetite that he would eat Children And parties were sent to take them both which found no such dreadful Preparations At other times when the People on the Lord's dayes were at Divine Worship they were distracted from it by Alarms that the Papists who and from whence none could tell were up in Arms and were just then about to fire their Houses and mix their Blood with their Prayers That there were Forces kept in Grotts and Caves under ground that should in the night break out into the midst of the City and cut all their throats And what was more prodigious and though ridiculous yet had not a few believers in London That there were designs by Gunpowder to blow up the Thames and choak them with the water in their beds Thus were the people taught to hate their Prince and by bloody news from every Quarter they were instructed to that Cruelty which they vainly feared and to adore those by whose Counsels they were delivered from so unexpected Dangers By all this the Faction gained the repute of Modesty inferiour to their supposed Trust when they demanded nothing else but the Command of the Tower and the Militia of all the Counties in England together with the Forts and Castles of the same For all which they moved the House of Commons of petition who desiring the Conjuncture of the Lords in the same were wholly refused by them Therefore stemmed by the Faction they petition alone Which unlimited Power the King absolutely refused to grant unto them who He foresaw would use that as they had all His other Concessions to the ruine of the Author of their Power Yet was pleased to consent after He had demonstrated the prejudice they required to the English Nation that they might send over an Army of 10000 Scots into Ireland and deliver unto them the strong Town and Port of Carick fergus one of the Chief Keys of that Kingdom which was done to oblige the Scots to them in their future designs And also He was pleased to wave the Prosecution of the Impeached Members and was willing to grant a Free and General Pardon for all His Subjects as the Parliament should think convenient But all this could not content them who had immoderate desires and they were more discontented that they could not usurp the King 's Rights than if they had lost their own Priviledges therefore to bring the Lords to a concurrence with them the hitherto prosperous Art of Tumultuous Petitions was again practised and great Numbers from several Counties were moved to come as Earthquakes to shake the Fundamental Constitutions of their House and to require that neither the Bishops nor the Popish Lords should continue in their Ancient Right to Vote among the Peers By this means they should weaken the King in the Voices of that House and whosoever they could not confide in they could fright him from Voting against them by exposing him as Popish to the Popular Fury For this was the mothod of using the Petitions The most common Answer was with Thanks and that the House of Commons were just now in consideration thereof The Petitioners were taught to reply that They doubted not of the care of the Commons House but all their distrust was in the House of Lords where the Popish Lords and Bishops had the greatest Power and there it stuck whose names they desired to know
and in this they were so earnest that they would not willingly withdraw whilest it was debated and then they had leave to depart with this Answer That the House of Commons had already endeavoured Relief from the Lords in their Requests and shall so continue till Redress be obtained Such Petitions as these were likewise from the several Classes of the inferiour Tradesmen about London as Porters Water-men and the like and that nothing of testifying an universal Importunity might be left unattempted Women were perswaded to present Petitions to the same effect While the Faction thus boasted in the success of their Arts Good men grieved to see these daily Infamies of the supreme Council of the Nation all whose Secrets were published to the lowest and weakest part of the People and they who clamoured it as a breach of their Priviledge that the King took notice of their Debates now made them the Subjects of Discourse in every Shop and all the corners of the Street where the good and bad were equally censured and the Honour and Life of every Senator exposed to the Verdict of the Rabble No Magistrate did dare to do his Office and all things tended to a manifest Confusion So that many sober Persons did leave the Kingdom as unsase where Factions were more powerful than the Laws And Just Persons chose rather to hear than to see the Miseries and Reproaches of their Country On the other side to make the King more plyable they tempt Him by danger in His most beloved Part the Queen concerning whom they caused a Rumour that they did intend to impeach Her of High Treason This Rumour made the deeper Impression because they had raised most prodigious Slanders which are the first Marks for destruction of Princes on Her and when they had removed all other Counsellors from the King She was famed to be the Rock upon which all hopes of Peace and Safety were split That She commanded no less His Counsels than Affections and that His Weakness was so great as not to consent to or enterprize any thing which She did not first approve That She had perverted Him to Her Religion and formed designs of overthrowing the Protestant Profession These and many other of a portentuous falshood were scattered among the Vulgar who are alwayes most prone to believe the Worst of Great Persons and the uncontrolled Licence of reporting such Calumnies is conceived the first Dawning of Liberty But the Parliament taking notice of the Report sent some of their House to purge themselves from it as an unjust Scandal cast upon them To which the Queen mildly answers That there was a general Report thereof but She never saw any Articles in writing and having no certain Author for either She gave little credit thereto nor will She believe they would lay any Aspersion upon Her who hath been very unapt to misconstrue the actions of any One person and much more the Proceedings of Parliament and shall at all times wish an Happy Vnderstanding between the King and His People But the King knowing how usual it was for the Faction by Tumults and other Practices to transport the Parliament from their Just Intentions in other things and that they might do so in this resolved to send Her into Holland under colour of accompanying their Eldest Daughter newly married to the Prince of Orange but in truth to secure Her so that by the fears of Her danger who was so dear unto Him He might not be forced to any thing contrary to His Honour and Conscience and that Her Affections and Relation to Him might not betray Her Life to the Malice of His Enemies With Her He also sent all the Jewels of the Crown that they might not be the spoils of the Faction but the means of the support of Her Dignity in foreign parts if His Necessities afterwards should not permit Him to provide for Her otherwise Which yet She did not so employ but reserved them for a supply of Ammunition and Arms when His Adversaries had forced Him to a necessary Defence It was said that the Faction knew of this conveyance and might have prevented it but that they thought it for their greater advantage that this Treasure should be so managed that the King in confidence of that assistance might take up Arms to which they were resolved at last to drive Him For they thought their Cause would be better in War than Peace because their present Deliberations were in the sense of the Law actual Rebellions and a longer time would discover those Impostures by which they had deluded the People who would soon leave them as many now did begin to repent of their Madness to the Vengeance which was due to their practices unless they were more firmly united by a communion of guilt in an open assaulting their Lawfull Prince The King hastens the security of the Queen and accompanies Her as far as Dover there to take his farewell of Her a business almost as irksome as death to be separated from a Wife of so great Affections and eminent Endowments and that which made it the more bitter was that the same cause which forced Her Separation from Him set Her at a greater distance from His Religion the only thing wherein their Souls were not united even the Barbarity of His Enemies who professed it yet were so irreconcileable to Vertue that they hated Her for Her Example of Love and Loyalty to Him While He was committing Her to the mercy of the Winds and Waves that She might escape the Cruelty of more unquiet and faithless men they prosecute Him with their distasteful Addresses and at Canterbury present Him with a Bill for taking away Bishops Votes in Parliament Which having been cast out of the House of Peers several times before ought not by the Course and Order of Parliament to have been admitted again the same Session But the Faction had now used their accustomed Engine a Tumult and it was then passed by the Lords and brought hither together with some obscure Threats that if it were not signed the Queen should not be suffered to depart By such impious Violences did they make way for that which they call'd Reformation This His Majesty signs though after it made a part of His penitential Confessions to God in hopes that that Bill being once consented to the Fury of the Faction which with so great Violence pursued an absolute Destruction of the Ecclesiastical Government would be abated as having advanced so far in their design to weaken the King's Power in that House by the loss of so many Voices which would have been alwayes on that side where Equity and Conscience did most appear But He soon found the Demagogues had not so much Ingenuity as to be compounded with and they made this but a step to the overthrow of that which He designed to preserve When His Majesty was come back as far as Greenwich He met with many informations how averse the Faction was
be watched and the Navy to be new rigged and fitted for the Sea New Plots were also discovered and Strange and unheard-of Counsels to murder the most Eminent Patriots are brought to light A Taylor in a ditch hears some desperate Cavaliers contriving the Death of Mr. Pym. A Plaister also taken from a Plague-sore was sent into the House to the same person that the Infection first seising on a Member of the quickest senses might thence more impetuously diffuse it self upon all the most Grave Senators Such like Plots as these and whatsoever could be devised were published to make the Vulgar think those demands of the Faction seem modest their dangers being so great which were very unjust And lest the King should at His coming into the North make use of that Magazine at Hull which at His own Charges He had provided for the Scotch Expedition for His own defence the Faction to secure that and the Town for their future purposes send down Sir John Hotham without any Order or Commission from either House of Parliament to seise on them This Man of a fury and impudence equal to their Commands when the King petitioned by the Gentlemen of York-shire to employ those Arms and that Ammunition for the Safety and Peace of that County where some of the Factious Members of Parliament had begun to form the like Seditions with those of London would have entred Hull Anno 1642. April 23. insolently shut the Gates upon Him and would not permit Him though with but twenty Attendants for He offered to leave the Guard of Noblemen and Gentlemen which followed Him without The King thereupon Proclaims him Traytor and by Letters complains of the Indignity and requires Satisfaction But the Faction rendred the Act so glorious that the House of Commons by their Votes approved what he had done without their Command and clamoured that the King had done them an injury in proclaiming so innocent a Member Traytor Ordered the Earl of Warwick to whom they had committed the Command of the Navy to land some men out of the Ships at Hull and to transport the Magazine there from thence to London An Order of Assistance was also given to several of their Confidents as a Committee of both Houses to reside at Hull and the Counties of York and Lincoln were commanded to execute their commands Besides they sent a Commission to Hotham to prosecute the Insolencies he had begun and kindle that War which took fire on the whole Nation and in a short space consumed him and his Son who were executed by the Instructors of his Villany For he fell under that same Fate which attends all the Instruments of Great Crimes to be Odious and suspected by those that made use of them Therefore they gave such a power to the Lord Fairfax in York-shire as did conclude the diminution and submission of Hotham to His Commands This caused him to reflect with grief and madness upon his first ministery to the Faction which appeared every day more monstrous to his Conscience being now spoiled of that Grandeur that he hoped would have been its reward and awakened by those Desolations in the whole Kingdom which followed it and were but as the Copies of his Original Treason Therefore he thought to expiate his former guilt by surrendring the Town to Him from whom he had detained it But his practices were discovered to the Faction by One whom they had sent thither in pretence to preach the Gospel but in truth secretly to search into the intrigues of his Counsels so that he perished in his design being neither stout nor wise enough in just enterprises nor of a pertinacy sufficient for a prosperous Perfidiousness And although in his Ruine the King observed how great a draught was offered to the highest thirst of Revenge yet He did truly bewail him and indeed he was so much the more to be pitied because his cruel Masters deluded him to a silence of their black Secrets with a false hope of Life till the Ax was upon his Neck So betraying his Soul to a surprise by his Spiritual enemies as his pretended Spiritual Guides had done his Body to them The Insolency of Hotham who acted according to his Instructions and late Commission beginning acts not usual in Peace nor justifiable by Law for he issued out Warrants for the Trained Bands to march into Hull with their Arms where he forced them to leave them and nakedly return to their homes that so they might be obnoxious to his Violence and the practices of the Committee which were sent down into the North to debauch the People in their Loyalty made the King intend His own Security by a Guard which the Gentry and Commonalty of York-shire that were witnesses of the Injury offered to their Prince did willingly and readily make up No sooner had the King expressed His intention of such a Guard but the Faction who were watchful of all opportunities of beginning a War and ingaging those that either through Fear or Weakness had hitherto submitted to their Impostures in a more obliging guilt for now the greatest part of the Peers who were of the most Ancient Families and Noblest Fortunes and a very great number of the House of Commons Persons of just hopes and fair Estates who perceiving the designs of the Disturbers scorned any longer to be their Slaves yet not thinking it safe to provoke the fury of the Vulgar Tumults by a present opposition had withdrawn from the Parliament to follow the King and His Fortune and every day some more were still falling off took this occasion to commence our Miseries and open those Sluces of Blood which polluted the whole Kingdom For upon the first Intelligence of it they filled the House of Commons and the City with Clamours That His Majesty had now taken Arms to the overthrow of them and the Protestant Religion and that they were not any longer to think the Happiness of the Kingdom did depend upon the King or any of the Regal Branches of that Stock that it would argue no want either of Duty or Modesty if they should depose Him By these Harangues they so heated the Parliament that was now more penurious than before in persons of Honour and Conscience to such a degree of Fury that unmindful how they themselves for eight months before upon impossible Fears and improbable Jealousies had taken a Guard they Resolved upon the Question that the King by taking to himself such a Guard did intend to levy War against the Parliament With an equall fury they Issue out Commissions into all parts of the Kingdom and appoint certain days for all the Trained Bands to be put into a posture of War sending down some of their Members to see to the execution of these Commands and to seise on the Magazines in the several Counties To all these their violent and unjust attempts the King first opposes the Law in several Declarations manifests the Power of Arms to be
they could to raise Horse and Foot to form an Army equal to their Usurpation which was not difficult for them to do for they being Masters of London whose Multitudes desirous of Novelty were easily amassed for any enterprise especially when the entring into this Warfare might make the Servant freer than his Master for such was the Licence was indulged to those Youths that would serve the Cause 20000 were sooner gathered than the King could get 500. The City also could afford them more Ordnance than the King could promise to Himself common Muskets and to pay their Souldiers besides the vast summs that were gathered for Ireland which though they by their own Act had decreed should not be used for any other enterprise yet now dispence with their Faith and imploy it to make England as miserable as that Island and the Contributions of the deluded souls for this War they seised also upon the Revenues of the King Queen Prince and Bishops and plunder the Houses of those Lords and Gentlemen whom they suspected to be Favourers of the King's Cause And in contemplation of these advantages they promised their credulous party an undoubted Victory and to lead Majesty Captive in Triumph through London within a Month by the Conduct of the Earl of Essex whom they appointed General Thus did they drive that Just and Gracious Prince to seek His Safety by necessary Arms since nothing worse could befall Him after a stout though unhappy Resistance than He was to hope for in a tame Submission to their Violence Therefore though He perfectly abhorred those Sins which are the Consequences of War yet He wanted not Courage to attempt at Victory notwithstanding it seemed almost impossible against so well-appointed an Enemy Therefore with an incredible diligence moving from place to place from York to Nottingham from thence to Shrewsbury and the Confines of Wales by discovering those Abilities with which His Soul was richly fraught unto His deluded Subjects He appeared not only worthy of their Reverence but of their Lives and Fortunes for His Defence and in all places incouraging the Good with His Commendations exciting the Fearful by His Example dissembling the Imperfections of His Friends but alwayes praising their Vertues He so prevailed upon those who were not men of many Times nor by a former Guilt debauch'd to Inhumanity that He had quickly contracted an Army greater than His Enemies expected and which was every day increased by those Lords and Gentlemen who refused to be polluted any longer with the practices of the Faction by sitting among them and being Persons of large Fortunes had raised their Friends and Tenants to succour that Majesty that now laboured under an Eclipse Most men being moved with Pity and Shame to see their Prince whose former Reign had made them wanton in Plenty to be driven from His own Palaces and concluded under a want of Bread to be necessitated to implore their aid for the preservation of His and their Rights So that notwithstanding all the Impostures of the Faction and the Corruptions of the Age there were many great Examples of Loyalty and Vertue Many Noble Persons did almost impoverish themselves to supply the King with Men and Money Some Private men made their way through numerous dangers to joyn with and fight under His Colours Many great Ladies and Vertuous Matrons parted with the Ornaments of their Sex to relieve His wants and some bravely defended their Houses in His Cause when their Lords were otherwhere seeking Honour in His Service Both the Universities freely devoted their Plate to succour their Prince the Supreme Patron and Incourager of all Learning and the Queen pawned Her Jewels to provide necessaries for the Safety of Her Husband Which Duty of Hers though it deserved the Honour of all Ages was branded by the Demagogues with the imputation of Treason This sudden and unexpected growth of the Strength of the King after so many years of Slanders and such industrious Plots to make Him odious and Contemptible raised the admiration of all men and the fears of that credulous Party who had given up their Faith to the Faction when they represented the King guilty of so much Folly and Vice and some corrupted Citizens had represented Him as a Prodigie of both in a Scene at Guild-Hall in London an Art used by Jesuites to impress more deeply a Calumny that they could not imagine any person of Prudence or Conscience would appear in His Service and they expected every day when deserted by all as a Monster He should in Chains deliver Himself up to the Commands of the Parliament Some attributed this strange increase in power to the natural Affection of the English to their Lawfull Sovereign from whom though the Arts and Impulses of Seditious Demagogues may a while estrange and divorce their minds yet their Genius will irresistibly at last force them to their first Love and therefore they urged the saying of that Observing States-man that if the Crown of England were placed but on an Hedge-stake he would be on that side where the Crown was Others referred it to the full evidence of the wickedness of His Adversaries for their Counsels were now discovered and their Ends manifest not to maintain the Common Liberty which was equally hatefull to them as Tyranny when it was not in their hands but to acquire a Grandeur and Power that might secure and administer to their Lusts and it was now every where published what Mr. Hambden Answered to one who inquired What they did expect from the King he replyed That He should commit Himself and all that is His to our Care Others ascribed it to the fears of ruine to those numerous Families and Myriads of people which the change of Government designed by the Parliament must necessarily effect But this though it argued that Cause exceeding bad by which so great a part of a Community is utterly destroyed without any absolute necessity for preserving the whole yet made but an inconsiderable Addition to the King whose greatest Power was built upon Persons of the Noblest Extract and the fairest Estates in England of which they could not easily suspect to be devested without an absolute overthrow of all the Laws of Right and Wrong which nevertheless was to be feared by their invasions on the King's most undoubted Rights For when Majesty it self is assaulted there can be no security for private Fortunes and those that decline upon design from the paths of Equity will never rest till they come to the Extremity of Injustice as these afterwards did Besides those that imputed the speedy amassing of these Forces to the Equity of the King's Cause His most Powerful Eloquence Indefatigable Industry and most Obliging Converse there were another sort that suspending their Judgements till all the Scenes of War were passed resolved all into the Providence of God Who though He were pleased to single Him out of all the Kings of the Earth as the sittest Champion to wrestle
with Adversity and to make Him glorious by Sufferings which being well born truly prove men Great yet would He furnish Him almost by a Miracle likewise with such Advantages in the conduct of which His Prudence and Magnanimity might evidence that He did deserve Prosperity and by clearing up even this way His eminent Vertues warn the following Ages from a Credulity to unquiet Persons since the best of Princes was thus infamously slandered From all these concurring Causes each one in their Way and Order did the King's strength so far increase as that He won many Battels and was not far from Conquest in the Whole War had not God seen fit to afflict this sinful Nation with Numerous and most Impious Tyrants and make us feel that no Oppressions are so unsupportable as those which are imposed by such as have made the highest Pretensions to Liberty of which we had bitter experience after the War was sinished that was now begun For there had been some slight Conflicts e're this in the several Counties betwixt the Commissioners of Array and the Militia with various Successes which require just Volumes and compleat Histories to relate and cannot be comprehended in the short View of the King's Life where it is only intended to speak of those Battels in which the King in Person gave sufficient evidence of His Wisdom and Valour The first of which was at Edge-Hill on Octob. 23. For the King had no sooner gotten a considerable Force though not equal to those of His Enemies but He marched towards London and in His way thither met with Essex's Army that were come from thence to take Him The King having viewed their Army by a Prospective-glass from the top of that Hill and being asked afterwards by His Officers what He meant to do To give them battel said He with a present Courage it is the first time I ever saw the Rebels in a body God and good mens Prayers to Him assist the Justice of My Cause and immediately prepared for the Fight which was acted with such a fury that near 6000 according to the common Account but some say a far less number were slain upon the place Night concluded this Battel which had comprehended the whole War had not the King 's prevailing Horse preferr'd the Spoils to Victory and left the Enemy some advantage to dispute for her But the King had all the fairest marks of her favour For though He had lost His General yet He kept the Field possessed the dead Bodies opened His way toward London and in the sight of some part of the Army of Essex who accounted it a Victory that He was not totally routed and killed took Banbury and entred Triumphantly into Oxford which He had designed for His Winter-quarters with 150 Colours taken in sight And having assured that place He advances towards London whither Essex had gotten before Him and disposed his bassled Regiments within ten miles of the City yet the King fell upon two Regiments of them at Brainford took 500 Prisoners and sunk their Ordnance From thence intending to draw nearer London He had intelligence that the City had poured forth all their Auxiliaries to re-inforce Essex's Troops to which being unwilling to oppose His Souldiers wearied with their March nor thinking it safe to force an Enemy to fight upon Necessity which inspires a more than Ordinary Fury He retreats to Oxford having taught His Enemies that He was not easily to be Overcome For in the management of this Battel He did not only undeceive the abused world of those Slanders which His Enemies had polluted Him with but He exceeded that Opinion His own Party had of His Abilities And though He parted from London altogether unexperienced in Martial affairs yet at Edge-Hill He appeared a most Excellent Commander His Valour was also equal to His Prudence and He could as well endure Labours as despise Dangers And by a communication of toils encouraged His Souldiers to keep the Field all the night when they saw He refused the refreshments of a Bed for He sought no other Shelter from the injuries of the Air than His own Coach These Vertues and this Success made such an impression on the Parliament that though they took all courses to hide the Infamy of their worsted Army yet in more humble Expressions than formerly they Petitioned the King for a Treaty of Peace which His Majesty very earnestly embraced But the Faction who were frighted with these Tendencies to an Accommodation cause some of the City to Petition against it and to make profer of their Lives and Fortunes for the prosecution of the War Encouraged by this they form their Propositions like the Commands of Conquerours and so streighten the Power and Time of their Commissioners that the Treaty at Oxford became fruitless which there had taken up all the King's employment this Winter though abroad His Forces were busie in several Parts of the Nation not without honour Anno 1643. At the Opening of the Spring the Queen comes back to England bringing with Her some considerable Supplies of Men Money and Ammunition and Her coming was entertained with such a Series of Successes that the King that Summer was Master of the North and West except some few Garrisons Which so dismayed the Parliament that very many of them were preparing to quit the Kingdom and had the King followed His own Counsels to march immediately towards London and not been fatally over-born at a Council of War which it is said His Enemies at London did assure their Party would so be first to attempt Gloucester He had in the judgement of all discerning men then finished the War with Glory But here He lay so long till Essex had gotten a Recruit from London and came time enough to relieve the Town though in his return the King necessitated him to fight worsted him near Newbery and so bravely followed him the next day that He forced the Parliaments Horse which were left in the Reer to seek their safety by making their way over a great part of their Foot yet lost on His side much Noble Blood as the Earls of Carnarvan and Sunderland and Viscount Falkland This last was lamented by all being equally dexterous at the Pen and Sword had won some Wreathes in those Controversies that were to be managed by Reason and was eminent in all the Generous parts of Learning above any of his Fortune and Dignity After this Encounter the King returns to Oxford to Consult with those Members of both Houses that had left the Impostures and Tumults at London to joyn with Him for the common benefit who being as to the Peers the far greater and as to the Commons an equal Number with those at Westminster they assumed the Name and Authority of Parliament and deliberated of the ways of Peace and means to prevent the Desolations which the Faction so furiously designed who were now resolving to encrease our Miseries by Calling in the Scots to their
but in truth because it had so frequent Offices for the King To these were added the Covenant the Fetters of the Scotish Slavery this was to bind the whole Nation to the Interests of the Faction and was used as the Water of Jealousie to discover those whom they did suspect Therefore all the Conspirators of what Sect soever whether Independents or Anabaptists though they refused to take it themselves because it did oblige to the Preservation of the King's Person and Authority yet were as eager Imposers of it as the Presbyterians who in simplicity urged it as the Fundamental Constitution of their Empire upon all who they thought would not prostitute their Souls to their designs or had any thing fit to be made their Spoils And by this only Engine many thousand Persons and Families were miserably ruined especially of the Clergy To oblige more fastly those that had no patience to expect nor hopes to receive any reward for their Service against their Prince in the other life and so would not be satisfied with the shews of Religion but sought more solid encouragements in the spoils of it the Lands of the Bishops were exposed to sale and that at such easie rates as might invite the hazards of the Purchase satiate their boundless Covetousness and ingage them in a pertinacious faith to their Merchants To cement all these distinct Humours in one common pleasure the Archbishop of Canterbury was prepared for a Sacrifice and about this time began his Tryal which continued a whole year being when the Houses were at leisure called by several months and weeks to answer to his Charge that by his frequent passages as a Prisoner he might give a pleasant Diversion to the Rabble who are delighted with the ruines and misfortunes of great Persons and by their injuries and reproaches he might be reduced to such a weakness of Spirit as was not competent with the defence of his Cause But his Cause and his Conscience were impregnable and he overthrew their Slanders though he could not their Power By these Arts and Ways was the Winter spent to prepare for the attempts of the following Summer wherein Anno 1644. though the Parliaments Forces increased by the Scotish Succours had the Success over several bodies of the Royalists yet that small Number that followed the King's Person and were guided by His own Counsels and Example obtained two great Victories For His Majesty having once more provided for the Safety of the Queen in sending Her to Excester there to lay down the burden of Her Love and from thence to seek for Shelter in France taken contrary to their hopes His last farewell of Her and left Oxford strengthned against the Siege which the Earl of Essex and Sir William Waller threatned that place with He with a small party draws out intending to form His Counsels according to the future Occurrences This made the Enemy divide and Essex was designed to reduce the West But Waller with whom usually went Sir Arthur Hesilrigge a Person fitter to raise Seditious Tumults than manage Armies was to hunt the King upon the Mountains of Wales towards which He seemed to direct His course But hearing of the resolutions of these two jealous Generals He wheels about to Oxford and from thence drew the greatest strength of that Garrison and with that falling upon Waller at Cropredy-bridge obtained a great Victory which would have been more prejudicial to the Enemy had not the Tenderness of His Subjects Blood restrained Him from prosecuting His Success to a greater slaughter But contenting Himself to have diverted Injuries from His own breast He only used this Victory for an advantage to Peace which in a Letter from Evesham July 4. He moves the Parliament unto But the unquiet Criminals rendred it vain and fruitless and represented to the People their yet prevailing Forces in the North and their Army in the West which had now taken in some considerable places to their Obedience Therefore to remove their Confidence in Essex's Power the King follows him and so closely pursues him that He drove him up into Cornwall and there did as it were besiege him During which He sent a Letter to him which was seconded by another from the Lords and Gentlemen in His Army to solicite His endeavours for the Peace and Quiet of the bleeding and wasted Kingdom But it met not its desired effect Because that Earl either valued not that solid Glory of being the happy Author of a Nations Settlement or feared that his past Actions had wholly despoiled him of hopes of Security in a return to Obedience or knew that his Authority was not so great to put an Issue to those Crimes which he had led others to commit For every inconsiderable person may be powerfull at Disturbances but to form Peace requires much Wisdom and great Vertues Which last was generally believed for he had found and complained that his Credit declined with the Faction that they were distrustfull lest their own Arts might teach him to have no faith to them because he often solicited them to a composing of the Kingdoms Distractions Therefore making no return to those Letters he provided for his own safety in a Cock-boat and ignominiously deserted his Army of which the Horse taking the advantage of a dark night made their escape but the Commanders of the Foot did capitulate for their Lives and left their Arms Cannon Baggage and Ammunition to the Disposal of the King The speedy and prudent acquisition of these two Victories shewed the King had those Abilities that might have inserted Him in the Catalogue of the Bravest Commanders and had not want of Success in His following Enterprises clouded the Glory of this Summer He had been as eminent among the Masters of War as He was among the Sons of Peace the Honour of which last He most eagerly thirsted as rendering Him most like that Majesty He did represent Therefore after this Victory by a Letter from Tavestock Sept. 8. He re-inforces that from Evesham for an Accord with the Parliament being not transported from His Lenity by the Violence with which Victory uses to hurry humane breasts to an insolence But He knew that Peace though it is profitable to the Conquered yet it is glorious for the Conquerour To busie His Army while He expected their Answer and formed an Association in the Western Counties He sits down before Plymmouth but finding this Message had an equal reception with the former and that the Faction intended not to sacrifice their ill-acquired Power and Usurped Interests to the publick Tranquillity He rises from thence and marches towards London from whence were by this time in the way to meet Him Essex and Waller recruited and joyned with the Earl of Manchester's Forces that were now returned from their Northern Services And at Newbery both sides joyn in an eager Fight which being varied with different successes in the several divisions each party draw off by degrees and neither found
these devices many fictitious Letters were composed false Rumours divulged and witnesses suborned to make men suspect that many dangerous Plots and portentous Designs were disguised in these Overtures of Accord Therefore the Commissioners of Parliament were instructed to offer no Expedient for an Accommodation nor hearken to such as were tendred to them in the Name of the King His Majesty seeing and bewailing his Condition that He must still have to do with those that were Enemies to Peace prepares Himself for the War at the approaching Spring and although this Winter was infamous with many losses either through the neglects or perfidiousness of some Officers yet before the season for taking the field was come His Counsels and Diligence had repaired those damages Anno 1645. In April He sends the Prince to perfect the Western Association and raise such Forces as the necessities of the Crown which was His Inheritance did require with Him is sent as Moderator of His Youth and prime Counsellour Sir Edward Hide now Lord High Chancellour of England whose Faithfulness had endeared him to His Majesty who also judged his Abilities equal to the Charge in which He continued with the same Faith through all the Difficulties and Persecutions of his Master till it pleased God to bring the Prince back to the Throne of His Fathers and him to the Chief Ministery of State After their departure the King draws out His Army to relieve His Northern Counties and Garrisons But being on His march and having stormed and taken Leicester in His way He was called back to secure Oxford which the Parliament Army threatned with a Siege But Fairfax having gotten a Letter of the Lord Goring's whom a Parliament Spy had cajoled to trust him with the delivery of it to His Majesty wherein he had desired Him to forbear ingaging with the Enemy till he could be joyned with Him he leaves Oxford and made directly towards the King that was now come back as far as Daventrey with a purpose to fight Him before that addition of strength and at a place near Naseby in Northampton-shire both Armies met on Saturday June 14. Cromwell having then also brought some fresh Horse to Fairfax whose absence from the Army at that time the King was assured by some who intended to betray Him should be effected Nevertheless the King would not decline the Battel and had the better at first but His vanquishing Horse following the chase of their Enemies too far a fatal errour that had been twice before committed left the Foot open to the other wing who pressing hotly upon them put them to an open rout and so became Masters of His Canon Camp and Carriage and among these of His Majesties Cabinet in which they found many of His Letters most of them written to the Queen which not contented with their Victory over His Forces they Print as a Trophee over His Fame that by proposing His secret Thoughts designed only for the breast of His Wife to the debauched multitude and they looking on them through the Prejudices which the Slanders of the Faction had already formed in their minds the Popular hatred might be increased But the publication of them found a contrary effect every one that was not barbarous abhorred that Inhumanity among Christians which Generous Heathens scorned to be guilty of and the Letters did discover that the King was not as He was hitherto characterized but that He had all the Abilities and Affections as well as all the Rights that were fit for Majesty and which is not usual He grew greater in Honour by this Defeat though He never after recovered any considerable power For the Fate of this Battel had an inauspicious influence upon all His remaining Forces and every day His losses were repeated But though Fortune had left the King yet had not His Valour therefore gathering up the scattered remains of His broken Army He marches up and down to encourage those whose Faith changed not with His Condition At last attempting to relieve Chester though He was beset behind and before and His Horse wearied in such tedious and restless Marches yet at first He beat Poyntz off that followed but being charged by Fresh Souldiers from the Leaguer and a greater Number He was forced to retreat and leave some of His gallant Followers dead upon the place After this He draws towards the North-East and commands the Lord Digby with the Horse that were lest to march for Scotland and there to joyn with Montross who with an inconsiderable company of men had got Victories there so prodigious that they looked like Miracles But this Lord was surprised before he could get out of York-shire for His Horse having taken 700 of the Enemies Foot were so wanton with their Success that they were easily mastered by another Party and he himself was compelled to fly into Ireland These several Overthrows brought another mischief along with it for the King's Commanders and Officers broke their own Peace and Agreement which is the only Comfort and Relief of the Oppressed and which makes them considerable though they are despoiled of arms by imputing as it useth to be in unhappy counsels the criminous part of their misfortunes to one another But many gallant Persons whom Loyalty and Religion had drawn to His Service endured the utmost hazards before they delivered the Holds He had committed to their trust and by that means employing the Enemies Arms gave the King time who was at last returned to Oxford to provide for His Safety Hither every day sad Messages of Ruines from every part of the Nation came which though they seemed like the falling pieces of the dissolved world yet they found His Spirit erect and undaunted For He was equal in all the Offices of His Life tenacious of Truth and Equity and not moveable from them by Fears a Contemner of worldly Glory and desirous of Empire for no other reason but because He saw these Kingdoms must be ruined when He relinquished the care of them But that which most troubled Him were the Importunities of His own disconsolate Party to seek for Conditions of Peace which He saw was in vain to expect would be such as were fit to accept for His former experience assured Him that these men would follow the Counsels of their Fortune and be more Insolent now than ever And for Himself He was resolved not to sacrifice His Conscience to Safety nor His Honour to Life This He often told those that thus pressed Him and did profess in His Letter to Prince Rupert who likewise moved Him to the same that He would yield to no more now than what He had offered at Uxbridge though He confessed it were as great a Miracle His Enemies should hearken to so much Reason as that He should be restored within a Month to the same Condition He was in immediately before the Battel at Naseby But yet to satisfie every One how tender He was of the Common Safety He sent
several Messages to the Parliament for a Treaty and offers to come Himself to London if He may have security for Himself and Attendants All which were either not regarded or answered with Reproaches And because the people began to murmur at so great an earnestness of the Faction to continue the Wounds of the Nation open and bleeding since there were many Forts yet held out for the King by Gallant Persons besides the Lord Hopton had an Army yet unbroken and Ormond and Montross had considerable Interests in Ireland and Scotland all which might be perswaded in a Treaty to part with those Arms which could not be taken from them without much blood and it was the common belief that these men sought for Victory not Peace and Liberty which was now tendred therefore to raise suspicions in the Vulgar it is suggested that the Cavaliers who came to Compound would take the advantage of the King's Presence if He were permitted to be there and kindle a new flame and War in the City And that it might be thought they had real grounds for these fears the Disarmed Compounders were commanded to depart above twenty miles from London and to injealous the people more all the transactions of the King in the Irish Pacification were published and amplified with the malicious Slanders and Comments of the implacable and conscious Demagogues that so the terrors of the Vulgar being augmented they might be frighted into a longer patience The King finding these men irreconcileable to Peace and that they had declared against His Coming though without a Caution tryes the Leaders of the English Army but they proved no less pertinacious and were now approaching to besiege Oxford Providence not leaving any more Choice but only shewing Him a way for a present Escape He goes in a Disguise which when Necessity cloathes Royal Persons with seems like an Ominous Cloud before the Setting of the Sun to the Scotish Camp that was now before Newark where the Ambassadour of the King of France who was then in the Leaguer had before covenanted for His Majestie 's Safety and Protection and the Scotish Officers had engaged to secure both Him and as many of His Party as should seek for Shelter with them and to stand to Him with their Lives and Fortunes Anno 1646. The King being come thither May 4. made a great alteration in affairs Newark was surrendred by the King's Command and Sir Thomas Glemham having gallantly defended Oxford till the besiegers offered honourable Conditions delivered up that also But the greatest Change of Counsels were at London where when it was related among whom the King had sought a Sanctuary various and different Discourses were raised Some wondred that His Majesty had sought a Refuge there where the Storm began and how He could apprehend to find Relief from those that were not only the Authors of His Troubles but now the great Advancers of His Overthrow And they conceived no Promises or Oaths can be a sufficient Caution from those People that have been often Persidious Others judged that in those necessities wherein the King was concluded it was as dangerous not to trust as to be deceived no Counsel could be better than to try whether a Confidence in them would make them faithful and whether they would then be honest when they had the Critical Opportunity to testifie to the world that they intended not what they did but what they said That they fought not against Him but for Him But a last sort bewailed both the greatness of the King's Dangers that should make Him seek for Safety in a tempestuous Sea and false bottom as also the debaucheries of the English Genius which was now so corrupted that their Prince was driven to seek an Asylum from their injuries among a people that were infamous and polluted with the Blood of many Kings While others discoursed thus of the King's journey the Parliament heated by the Independents fiercely declared against the Scots who were removing the King to Newcastle and used several methods to make them odious and drive them home For they kept back their Pay that they might exact Free-Quarter from the Country then they did extenuate their Services derogate from their famed Valour upbraid them as Mercenaries threaten to force them out by the Sword All which while the English Presbyterians though they wish'd well to their Brethren yet lest they should seem to indulge the Insolencies of a strange Nation did not dare to plead in their defence But the Scots themselves for a time did justifie their Reception and Preservation of His Majesty by the Laws of Nature Nations and Hospitality which forbid the delivery and betraying of those that have fled to any for Succour The Democratick Faction urged that it was not lawful for the Scots their Hirelings and in their Dominion to receive the King into their Camp without the leave of their Masters and keep Him without their Consent These Debates were used to raise the King's price Which when the Scots were almost assured of to make their ware more valuable they solicite the King in hopes of their Defence to command Montross to depart from his noble Undertakings in Scotland where he had almost recovered the Overthrow Roxbrough and Traquaire had betrayed him unto and was become formidable again as also the Loyal Marquess of Ormond to desist from his gallant Oppositions both of the Irish Rebels and English Forces Which when the King had done being not willing those Gallant Persons should longer Hazard their brave Lives and after both these Excellent Leaders had more in anger than fear parted with their unhappy Arms that they might have a colour of betraying Him whom the General Assembly of Scotland which useth to hatch all the Seditions to the heat and strength of a seeming Authority had forbid to be brought into His Native and Ancient Kingdom as He affectionately call'd it they tender Him the Covenant pretending without that Chain upon Him they did not dare to lead Him into Scotland This His Majesty refused not if they would first loose those Scruples of Church-Government which lay upon His Conscience Therefore to untie those Knots Master Henderson that was then the Oracle of the Kirk and the great Apostle of the Solemn Covenant was employed to converse with Him But the Greatness of the King's Parts and the Goodness of His Cause made all his attempts void for the Papers being published every one yielded the Victory to His Majesty and unfortunate for he returned home and not long after died as some reported of a Grief contracted from the sense of his Injuries to a Prince whom he had found so Excellent While these things were acting at Newcastle the bargain was stroke at London and for 200000 l. His Majesty stripp'd of those Arms He had when He came among them was delivered up as it were to be scourged and crucified to some Commissioners from the Parliament But to Honest their Perfidiousness they add this
to tempt Him to a Confidence in their integrity that they might the more easily to His disgrace ruine Him and murder Him by His own Concessions if He would be deluded by them highly pretend to a Compassionate Sense of His Sufferings and complain of the Parliaments Barbarous Imprisoning Him in His own Palaces wondering they had no more Reverence for Majesty and to beget a belief of this they profess which they would have to be conceived with them was more sacred than any Oaths that they will never part with their Arms till they have made His way to His Throne and rendred the Condition of His Party more tolerable Besides these Promises and Compassions they permit Him the Ministery of His Chaplains in the Worship of God which it is said He took with so great a Joy that He almost believed Himself free and safe it being His most heavy burden while He was the Parliaments Captive the Commerce of Letters with the Queen the Visits of His own Party and the Service of His Courtiers some of whom they also admitted to their Council of War mould Propositions which they will urge in His behalf and alter them to the King's Gust and at His Advice In their publick Remonstrances against the Covetousness Ambition Injustice Cruelty and Self-mindedness of the Parliament they do sometimes obliquely sometimes plainly profess that the King Queen and the Royal Family must be restored to all their Rights or else no hope of a solid Peace but then they would intermix such Conditions as argued they sought Reserves for a perfidious escape For Cromwell did among his Confidents boast of his fine Arts and that by these Indulgences was intended nothing but His Destruction By all these Impostures they prevailed nothing upon the Hopes or Fears of the King nor did He commit any thing unworthy His former Fortune and the Greatness of His Integrity and Wisdom or which any of the Disagreeing Factions could use to His reproach But they found another kind of Success upon the Parliament for they sacrificed to the Commands of their Stipendiaries eleven Members of the House of Commons and seven of the Peers causing them to forbear sitting among them because they had been accused by the Army in a very frivolous Charge All men wondering at the inequality of those mens Spirits who had so furiously rejected the Articles of their lawfull Sovereign against five or six of their Body and yet did now so tamely yield to the slight Cavils and dislike of their Mercenaries above thrice that Number They therefore concluded that neither Religion Justice or the Love of Liberty which are alwayes uniform but unworthy Interests and corrupt Souls which vary with fears and hopes had been the Principles and first Movers of their attempts Besides this they were so prone to Slavery that they had gone on to Vote all the lusts of the Army had not a Tumult their Arts being now turned upon their own heads from London stopp'd them in their violent speed and kept the Speaker in his Chair till they had voted more generously that it was neither for their Honour nor Interest to satisfie the demands of the Souldiers and that the King should come to London to treat These contrary desires of the divided Faction which had joyntly oppressed their Sovereign shewed that Ill men will more easily conspire together in War than consent in Peace and that Combinations in Crimes will conclude in Jealousies each Party thinking the advantages of the other too great and that Power is never thought faithfull which is accounted excessive Therefore both prepare for War With the 140 Members that sate in Parliament were joyned the City and the cashiered Souldiers and Officers that had served in their pay With the Army were the Speakers of both Houses who had sled to them with about fifty of their Members that projected the Change of Government being either for an Oligarchy or Democracie yet left some of the same judgement behind to betray and disturb the Counsels at London To these did adhere the Neighbouring Counties who were cajoled by the splendid Promises of the Army of Restoring the King which they much boasted Dissolving the Parliament and Establishing Peace and Government and they more willingly credited these because they had conceived an hatred of the Parliament and City both for beginning the War and now obstructing Peace The Army intitle their attempts for King and People Their Adversaries for bringing the King to His Parliament The Commanders were greedy of that War which promised an easie Victory and made the poor Souldiers hope for the Plunder of the City For the advantage was clear on the Army's side which consisted of veterane Souldiers united among themselves by a long Converse and known Commanders but the force of the other was made up of a tumultuary Multitude gathered under new Leaders and so had no mutual confidence their meetings were full of doubts and fears none could determine in private nor in publick Consult because they dared not trust one another and it was observed that those who were most treacherous talk'd most boldly against the Enemy Therefore in the very beginnings the Parliament and City desert their Enterprise Treat with and open their Gates to the Army who march in Triumph through London bringing the Speakers and their Fellow-Travellers to their Chairs seize upon the Tower dismantle the Fortifications pull down all the Chains and Posts of the City send the Lord Mayor and the Chief Citizens to the Tower and reduce all the Power of the Nation in Obedience to the Commanders For Fairfax is made General of all the Forces both in England and Ireland and Rainsbrough a Leveller and a violent Head of the Democraticks High Admiral The impeached Presbyterians fled beyond Sea others of that Sect drooping complyed with the Fortune of the Conquerours and that which grieved good Men most was a Publick Thanksgiving which is not to be observed but for the happy endeavours of a Nation in their vertuous and glorious undertakings for Liberty and Safety but now was prophaned for our Slavery and Misery to God was appointed for the Army and they were entertained now at a Feast whom before the City would have forced from their Walls While these things were in Motion the King consults Heaven for Direction and his Party modestly abstain from either side thought both to be abhorred and knew that Party would be the worst which should overcome The Army having now the greatest strengths of the Nation the Parliament and City at their obedience make no mention of their former promises to the King only the Adjutators were fierce for breaking that Parliament and calling another as they call'd it more equal Representative But both their Synagogue and the Council of War being now delivered from fear of the Presbyterians began to contrive the destruction both of the King and Monarchy As for the King whom they had now brought to Hampton-Court some that had before contrived His
Death and to murder Him while He was in the Scotch Camp so at once to satisfie their own Revenge and Load their Enemies with the Infamy of the Murder yet could not then perform it were now fiercefor a speedy and secret Assassination by Pistol or Poison Others would have Him tryed and condemned by their Council of War But the Chiefs thought fit to proceed more artisicially in their Crime and when they should get more Authority destroy Him by a Parliamentary way of Justice To bring this about they must proceed to make Him more odious that the People might be patient while they kill Him and undo them To proceed therefore to their Impiety Cromwell and his Creatures stickle fiercely in the House of Commons and cause the Parliament to send not Conditions of Peace to be treated on but Propositions like Commands that admitted no dispute which if the King had yielded unto He had despoiled Himself of Majesty and been thought guilty of so much want of Spirit as would conclude an unfitness for Empire besides such a voluntary Diminution would have been equally unsafe as unglorious And if He did not then He was to be esteemed the only Obstacle of the Universal Peace And lest the King should put them to more tedious Arts by signing them they themselves to divert Him privately procure more soft Articles and professed to be sorry the Presbyterian Sowreness and Rigour did yet leaven the House which made these Propositions so unpleasant The King could not but perceive the practices of the Army yet being resolved that no Dangers whatsoever should make Him satisfie those unreasonable Demands of the Parliament which granted would have been the heaviest oppression on His Subjects and the greatest injury to His Posterity He could possibly be guilty of For to good Princes the Safety of their People and their own Memory which is built upon the Happiness of Posterity through their Counsels are more pretious than Life and Power and although Providence and the Malice of His Enemies had obstructed His way to Glory by Victories and Success yet He would trace it in the unenvied and unquestionable paths of Constancy and Justice Therefore to make His denial of them advantageous to Himself by a seeming confidence in the Army's profers thereby to oblige if it were possible those that had no sense either of Faith or Honour or at least to injealous those two Rivals for His Power and commit them the King absolutely rejects the Parliaments Propositions and requires the Demands of the Army as more equal and fit for a Personal Treaty and that the Army also should nominate Commissioners Cromwell and His Complices seemed to be joyful for this Answer of His Majesty which had preferred them before their Competitors to the Honour of Justice and Moderation in the Eyes of the People but yet secretly did they exasperate the minds of the more short-sighted Commons against the King for this Affront And to the King they profess a shame and trouble upon their Spirits for so they loved to speak that they could not now perform their Promises sometimes they excused themselves by a Reverence to the Parliament at other times by the fierceness of the Adjutators and when by these excuses they had coloured their delayes to some length they began to interpret their sayings otherwise than the King apprehended them to forget what they had assured Him of and at last openly to refuse any performance To all these Perfidies they add other Frauds to beget a fear in Him of the Adjutators and the Levellers who they informed Him meditated His Murder professed they could not for the present moderate their bloody and impetuous Consultations but when they should recover the lost Discipline of their Army then they might easily and speedily satisfie their engagements to Him To give credit to their words the Fury of the Adjutators was blown to a more conspicuous Flame their Papers were published for a change of Government call'd The Case of the Army and The Agreement of the People the animations of Peters and another of the same Diabolical spirit saying His Majesty was but a dead Dog were divulged and all were communicated to some Attendants about the King with an Advice from the Chiefs of the Army to escape for His Life for they were unwilling He should be killed while they helplesly look'd on The fury and threatnings of men of such destructive and bloody Principles who accounted all things lawfull that they could do that Providence administring Opportunity did invite and licence their impieties and who imputed all their lusts that had no colour from Justice to the Perswasions of the Holy Spirit were not to be despised nor was the King to abandon His Life if He could without sin preserve it to a longer waiting upon God Therefore with three of His most trusted Attendants in the dark tempestuous and ominous night of Novem. 11. He leaves Hampton-Court some say uncertain where to seek safety others that He intended to take Ship but being disappointed in His Expectation He was at last fatally led into the Power and when He could not escape committed Himself to the Loyalty and Honour of Col. Hammond a Confident of Cromwell's who had been but a little before made Governour of the Isle of Wight for this very purpose and was by him conveyed to Carisbrook-Castle the very Pit His Enemies had designed for Him For it was discoursed in the Army above a fortnight before that the King e're long would be in the Isle of Wight and the very night He departed from Hampton-Court the Centinels were withdrawn from their usual Posts on purpose to facilitate His flight The all-wise God not permitting Him to fly from those greater Trials and more Glorious Acts of Patience He had designed for Him Being here in this false Harbour He minds that business which lay most on His Heart the Settlement of the Nation He sends Concessions to the Parliament more benign and easie than they could desire or hope together with His Reasons why He could not assent to their Demands and earnestly solicites them to pity the Languishing Kingdom and come to a Personal Treaty with Him on His Concessions and the Army's Demands But the Conspirators to cut off all hopes of a Treaty take this Occasion to send four Preliminary Articles which if He would pass as Acts they would treat of the rest These were so unjust that the Scotch Commissioners in the Name of their Kingdom declare against them in publick Writings and following the Messengers of Parliament to the Isle of Wight do in the presence of His Majesty protest against them as contrary to the Religion the Crown and Accords of both Kingdoms The King according to His wonted Wisdom and Greatness of Mind presently returns them an Answer to shew the Injustice of having Him grant the chief things before the Treaty which should be the Subject of it and to give them such an Arbitrary Power to the ruine
all and those the reproach of that Assembly For besides those that were violently excluded others that did abhor the Conditions of sitting there withdrew themselves to their own homes And many of those who formerly deluded by their pretensions to Religion Justice and Liberty had hitherto been of the Faction yet now awakened by these clamorous Crimes sorsook their bloody Confederacy Yet did not this contemptible Number of which in most Votes there were Twenty Dissenters blush to assume the Authority of managing the weightiest Assairs of the English Empire to alter and change the Government to expose His Majesty to a violent Murder and to overthrow the Ancient Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom For being wholly devoted to the service of the Army they communicated counsels with them and whatsoever was resolved at the Council of War pasled into a Law by the Votes of this Infamous Remnant of the House of Commons who now served the Souldiers in hopes of part of the Spoil and a precarious Greatness which being acquired by so much Wickedness could not be lasting In order therefore to the Army's design they revive those Votes of No Addresses to the King which had at first but surreptitiously and by base practices passed and had been afterwards Repealed by a full House Those Votes of a Treaty with the King and of the Satisfactoriness of His Concessions with scorn they rased out of the Journal-Book And then proceeded to Vote 1. That the People under God are the Original of all Just Power 2. That the Commons of England Assembled in Parliament being Chosen by and Representing the People have the Supreme Authority of this Nation 3. That whatsoever is enacted and declared for Law by the Commons of England Assembled in Parliament by which they understood themselves hath the sorce of a Law 4. That all the People of this Nation are concluded thereby although the Consent and Concurrence of the King and House of Peers be not had thereunto 5. That to raise Arms against the People's Representative or Parliament and to make War upon them is High Treason 6. That the King Himself took Arms against the Parliament and on that account is guilty of the blood shed throughout the Civil War and that He ought to expiate the crime with His own blood Those that were less affected with the common Fears and Miseries could not temper their mirth and scorn at such ridiculous Usurpers that thought to adjust their Crimes by their own Votes that in one breath would adorn the People with the Spoils of Monarchy and in the next rob the People to invest themselves And it is said that even Cromwell who intended to ruine our Liberty was ashamed and scorned their so ready Slavery and afterwards did swear at the Table of an Independent Lord that he knew them to be Rascals and he would so serve them Others of more melancholy Complexions considering the baseness of these servile Tyrants and the humours of their barbarous Masters the Souldiers all whose inhumanities they were to establish by a Law and that Power gotten by Wickedness cannot be used with the Modesty that is fit for Just Magistrates justly feared that as under the King they had enjoyed the height of Liberty so under these men they were to be overwhelmed in the depth of Slavery and that these Votes which overturned the very Foundation of our Laws could not be designed but for some horrid Impiety and our lasting Bondage which came so to pass For in their next Consultations they Constitute a Tribunal to Sentence their Sovereign which afterwards they used as a Shambles for the most Loyal and Gallantest of the Nobless and People of the most abject Subjects and to procure a Reverence to the Vilest of men they give it the specious name of The High Court of Justice For which they appoint One hundred and fifty Judges that the Number might seem to represent the whole Multitude of the most violent and heady of all the Faction To whom they give a Power of Citing Hearing Judging and Punishing CHARLES STVART King of England To make up this Number they had named six Peers of the Upper House and the twelve Judges of the Land But the greatest part were Officers of the Army who having confederated against His Majesty and publickly required His Blood could not without a contempt to the light of Reason be appointed His Judges and Members of the Lower House who were most violent against Monarchy and indeed all Government wherein themselves had no share The rest were Persons pick'd out of the City of London and Suburbs thereof who they imagined would be most obsequious to their Lusts Those that surveyed the List and knew the Men deemed them most unfit for a Trust of Justice and proper Instruments for any wicked undertaking for of these Judges one or two were Coblers others Brewers one a Goldsmith and many of them Mechanicks Such among them as were descended of Ancient Families were men of so mean worth that they were only like the Statues of their Ancestors had nothing but their Names to make them known unto the World Some of them were Spend-thrifts Bankrupts such as could be neither safe nor free unless the Kingdom were in Bondage and most notorious Adulterers whose every Member was infamous with its proper Vice Vain and Atheistical in their Discourse Cowardly and Base in Spirit Bloody and Cruel in their Counsels and those Parts that cannot honestly be named were most dishonest One of them was accused of a Rape Another had published a Book of Blasphemies against the Trinity of the Deity Some of them could not hope to get impunity for their Oppressions of the Country and Expilations of the publick Treasure but by their Ministry to this Murther Others could not promise themselves an advancement of their abject or declining Fortune but by this Iniquity Yet all these by the Faction were inrolled in the Register of Saints though fitter to stand as Malefactors at the Bar than to sit upon Seats of Judgement And notwithstanding their diligent search for such a Number of men who would not blush at nor fear any guilt some of those whom they had named in abhorrency of the Impiety refused to fit and some that did yet met there in hopes of disturbing their Counsels All this while the House of Peers were not Consulted and it was commonly supposed that most of them terrified with those Preparations against the King the only defence of the Nobless against the Popular Envie would absent themselves from that House except four or five that were the Darlings of the Faction and they deemed the Names and Compliance of those sew were enough to give credit and Authority to their bloody Act. But in them they were disappointed also for some of the Peers did constantly meet and on that day wherein the Bill for Tryal of the King was carried up to that House there were Seventeen then present a greater Number than usual who all
had condemned to die And in the War it was known how often His Lenity had clipped the wings of Victory But it appeared that these men as they had broken all Rights of Peace so they would also those of Conquest and destroy that which their Arms pretended to save How little credit their Accusation found appeared by the endeavours of all Parties to preserve the King's Person from Danger and the Nation from the guilt of His Blood For while they were thus engaged to perpetrate their intended Mischiefs all Parties declare against it The Presbyterian Ministers almost all those of London and very many out of the several Counties and some though few also of the Independents did in thâ—â—â— Sermons and Conferences as also by Monitory Letters Petitions Protestations and Remonstrances publickly divulged adjure the Assassinates not to draw so great a guilt upon themselves and the whole Nation by that Murther For it was contrary to those numerous and fearful Obligations of their many Oaths to the Publick and Private Faith which was exprest in their Protestations and many Declarations to the Laws of the Land those of Nature and Nations and the Commands of Scripture That is was to the dishonour of our Religion and against the publick good of the Kingdom But all was fruitless for they had lost their Ministerial Authority by serving the Faction so long till they needed not their Assistance and despised their admonitions Besides the very same Principles they preached to kindle the War were now beat back into their faces and made use of against them to adjust the Murther The People also contemned them for their short-sightedness in that they would be the heady and indiscreet Instruments of such men and in such practices as must of necessity at last ruine them and all Ministers as well as the King and Bishops The Scots also by their Commissioners declare and protest against it The States of Holland by their Ambassadors if they were faithfull in their trust did intercede and deprecate it as most destructive to the Protestant Interest Some of the most eminent of the Nobility as the Earl of Southampton the Duke of Richmond the Marquess of Hertford the Earl of Lindsey and others neglect no wayes either by Prayers or Ransom to save the King Yea they offered themselves as being the prime Ministers of the King's Commands as Hostages for Him and if the Conspirators must needs be fed with blood to suffer in His stead for whatsoever He had done amiss The Prince piously assaies all wayes and means to deliver His Father from the danger For besides the States Ambassadours whom He had procured both He and the Prince of Orange did daily send as Agents the Kindred Relations and Allies of Cromwell Ireton and the other Conspirators with full power to propose any Conditions make any Promises and use all Threatnings to divert them if it were possible from their intended Cruelty or at least to gain some time before the Execution But all was in vain for no Conditions of Peace could please them who were possessed with unlawful and immoderate desires their Ambition that is more impetuous than all other affections had swallowed the hopes of Empire therefore they would remove the King to enthrone themselves Some thought that their despair of Pardon had hardened them to a greater Inhumanity for if after all these attempts they continued the King's Life they must beg their own which they knew Justice would not and they resolved Mercy should not give for this is reckoned among the benefits which we hate to receive and Men are usually ashamed to confess they deserved death Whatsoever it was that truly made them thus cruel they publickly pretended no other Motive than the Calls and Ducts of Providence and the Impulses of the Blessed Spâ—â—â—â— To carry on this Cheat Hugh Peters the Pulpit-Buffoon of a luxuriant Speech skill'd â—o move the Rabble by mimical Gestâ—â—â—â— Impudent and Prodigal of his own and others fame Ignominious from his Youth for then suffering the contumely of Discipline being publickly whipt at Cambridge he was ever after an Enemy to Government and therefore leagued himself with unquiet Sectaries preaches before these fictitious Judges upon that Text Psal 149.8 To hind their Kings in chains and their Nobles in fetters of iron He assures them undoubtedly that this was prophesied of them that they were the Saints related to in that Scripture that they should judge the Kings of the Earth often calling them in his profane Harangue the Saint-Judges Then he professed that he had for a certain found upon a strict Scrutiny that there were in the Army 5000 Saints no less holy than those that now in Heaven conversed with God Afterwards kneeling in his Pulpit weeping and lifting up his hands he earnestly begs them in the name of the People of England that they would execute Justice upon that Wretch CHARLES and would not let Benhadad escape in Safety Then he inveighs against Monarchy and wrests the Parable of Jotham to his purpose wherein when the Trees would chuse a King the Vine and the Olive refused the Dignity but the Bramble received the Empire and he compared Monarchy to the Bramble And all the while of contriving and executing this Murther he preached to the Souldiers and in some places about the City bitterly and contemptuously railing against the King Others also of the Congregational perswasion acted their parts in this Tragedie but more closely and not so much in the face of the Sun The Conspirators taking heat from their infamous Preachers whom they themselves had first kindled and somewhat doubting that these several strong Applications from all Parties to save the King and the Universal Discontents might take some advantage from their delay with more speed hasten the Assassination In order to which they send a Serjeant of Arms with a guard of Horse lest the People should stone him for his Employment into Westminster-Hall and other places in London to summon all that could lay any crime to the King 's charge to come and give in their evidence against Him Having proclaimed their wicked purposes and dress'd up a Tribunal at the upper end of Westminster-Hall with all the shapes of terrour where the President with his abject and bloody Assistants were placed thither afterwards they bring this most Excellent Monarch whom having despoiled of three Great Kingdoms they now determined also to deprive of Life Into which Scene the King enter'd with a generous Miene shewing no signs of discomposure nor any thing beneath His former Majesty but as if He were to combate for Glory the Monsters of Mankind He undauntedly took the Seat which was set for Him with scorn looking upon the fictitious Judges and with pity upon the People who crouding in the great Gates of the Hall being flung open did bewail in Him the frailty of our Humane condition whose highest Greatness hath no Security A sad Spectacle even to those that were not in danger He
being set the Charge against Him was read with all those reproachful terms of Tyrant Traitor and Murtherer after which He was impleaded in the name of the People of England This false Slander of the People of England was heard with Impatience and Detestation of all and stoutly attested against by the Lady Fairfax Wife of the Lord Fairfax who by this act shewed her self worthy of her Extract from the Noble Family of the Veres for from an adjoyning Scaffold where she stood she cryed out with a loud voice but not without danger that It was a Lie not the Tenth part of the People were guilty of such a Crime but all was done by the Machinations of that Traitor Cromwell But the King after the Charge was read with a countenance full of Majesty and Gravity demands by what Authority they proceeded with Him thus contrary to the Publick Faith and what Law they had to try Him that was an absolute Sovereign Bradshaw replying that of the Parliament His Majesty shewed the detestable Falshood in pretending to what they had not and if they had it yet it could not justifie these Practices To which reply when they could not answer they force Him back to the place of His Captivity The Magnanimity of the King in this dayes contest with these inhumane Butchers did much satisfie the People and they were glad while they thought not of His Danger that He wanted not either Speech or Courage against so powerfull Enemies that He had spoken nothing unworthy of Himself and had preserved the Fame of His Vertues even in so great Adversities For He seemed to triumph over their Fortune whose Arms He was now subject to The Parricides sought to break His Spirit by making His appearances frequent before such contemptible Judges and often exposing Him to the contempt of the armed Rabble therefore four dayes they torture Him with the Impudence and Reproaches of their Infamous Sollicitor and President But He still refused to own their Authority which they could not prove lawful and so excellently demonstrated their abominable Impiety that He made Col. Downes one of their Court to boggle at and disturb their Proceedings They therefore at last proceeded to take away that Life which was not to be separated from Conscience and Honour and pronounced their Sentence of Death upon their Lawful and Just Sovereign Jan. 27. not suffering Him to speak after the Decree of their Villany but hurrying Him back to the place of His Restraint At His departure He was exposed to all the Insolencies and Indignities that a phanatick and base Rabble instigated by Peters and other Instructors of Villany could invent and commit And He suffer'd many things so conformable to Christ His King as did alleviate the sense of them in Him and also instruct Him to a correspondent Patience and Charity When the barbarous Souldiers cryed out at His departure Justice Justice Execution Execution as those deceived Jews did once to their KING Crucifie Him Crucifie Him this Prince in imitation of that most Holy King pitied their blind fury and said Poor Souls for a piece of Money they would do as much for their Commanders As He passed along some in defiance spit upon His Garments and one or two as it was reported by an Officer of theirs who was one of their Court and praised it as an evidence of His Souldiers Gallantry while others were stupified with their prodigious baseness polluted His Majestick Countenance with their unclean spittle the Good King reflecting on His great Exemplar and Master wiped it off saying My Saviour suffer'd far more than this for me Into his very face they blowed their stinking Tobacco which they knew was very distastefull to Him and in the way where He was to go just at His feet they flung down pieces of their nasty pipes And as they had devested themselves of all humanity so were they impatient and furious if any one shewed Reverence or Pity to Him as He passed For no honest Spirit could be so forgetful of humane frailty as not to be troubled at such a sight to see a Great and Just King the rightful Lord of three flourishing Kingdoms now forced from His Throne and led captive through the streets Such as pull'd off their Hats or bowed to Him they beat with their Fists and Weapons and knock'd down one dead but for crying out God be mercifull unto Him When they had brought Him to His Chamber even there they suffered Him not to rest but thrusting in and smoaking their filthy Tobacco they permitted Him no privacy to Prayer and Meditation Thus through variety of Tortures did the King pass this day and by His Patience wearied His Tormentors nothing unworthy His former greatness of Fortune and Mind by all these Affronts was extorted from Him though Indignities and Injuries are unusual to Princes and these were such as might have forced passion from the best-tempered meekness had it not been strengthned with assistance from Heaven In the Evening the Conspirators were acquainted by a Member of the Army of the King's desire that seeing His death was nigh it might be permitted Him to see His Children and to receive the Sacrament and that Doctor Juxon then Lord Bishop of London now Arch-Bishop of Canterbury might be admitted to pray with Him in His private Chamber The first they did not scruple at the Children in their power being but two the Lady Elizabeth and the Duke of Glocester and they very young The second they did not readily grant Some would have had Peters to undertake that employment for which the Bishop was sent for But he declined it with some Scoffs as knowing that the King hated the Offices of such an unhallowed Buffoon So that at last they permitted the Bishops access to the King to whom his eminent Integrity had made him dear For with so wonderful a prudence and uprightness he had managed the envious Office of the Treasury that that accusing age especially of Church-men found not matter for any impeachment nor ground for the least reproach The next day being Sunday the King was removed to St. James's where the Bishop of London read Divine Service and preached before Him in private on these words In the day when God shall judge the secrets of all men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel While the King and the Bishop at this time and also at other times were performing the Divine Service the rude Souldiers often rushed in and disturbed their Offices with vulgar and base Scoffs vain and frivolous Questions The Commanders likewise and other impertinent Anabaptists did interrupt His Meditations who came to tempt and try Him and provoke Him to some unnecessary disputations But He maintained His own Cause with so irrefragable Arguments that He put some to silence the petulancy of others He neglected and with a modest contempt dissembled their Scoffs and Reproaches In the narrow space of this one day and under so continued Affronts and Disturbances
them to be not only deceivers but also deceived For that Just Prince hath of His own Seed to sit upon His Throne And Posterity shall wonder at the Vanity as well as the Falseness of those men that they should think to destroy the Memory of that Prince whose true and lasting Glory consisted not in any thing wherein it was possible for Successors to shew the Power of their Malice but in a solid Vertue which flourisheth by Age and whose Fame gathers strength from multitude of Years when Statues and Monuments are obnoxious to the flames of a Violent Envy and the Ruines of Time Besides this they take care to suppress all those more Lively figures of Him and most lasting Statues His Writings and therefore force from My Lord of London whom they kept prisoner all those Papers His Majesty had delivered to him and make a most narrow search of his Cloathes and Cabinets lest any of those Monuments of Piety and Wisdom should escape to the Benefit of Mankind Yet by the gracious Goodness of the Almighty God to their eternal infamy and for a perpetual Record of the King 's great Vertues there escaped their Search and was published to the World The Book of His Meditations and Soliloquies In the Composition of which a Sober Reader cannot tell which to admire most either His incredible Prudence His ardent Piety or His Majestick and truly Royal Style Those parts of it which consisted of Addresses to God corresponded so nearly in the Occasions and were so full of the Piety and Elegancy of David's Psalms that they seemed to be dictated by the same Spirit His very Assassinates confessed the goodness of the Book though they were ashamed He whom they had murthered should be the Author For Bradshaw in his Examination of Royston who Printed it asked him How he could think so bad a man for such would that Monster have this Excellent Prince thought to be could write so good a Book Therefore they laboured by all wayes and means to suppress it as the greatest witness against them to Posterity and which would make them odious in all Generations For the Blood of the Holy Wise and Eloquent leaves eternal stains of Infamy upon those that spill'd it because no man reads their Works but they curse those cruel hands which cut the veins and stopp'd the streams of so much Goodness and we esteem them barbarous and inhumane Monsters who did not Reverence the Persons of those whose Writings we admire But their fury became ridiculous while they thought by their present power to corrupt His Memory and take off the admiration of the following Ages for the more they hindred the Publication the more earnestly it was sought after yet they endeavoured it another way and therefore hired certain mercenary Souls to despoil the King of the Credit of being the Author of it Especially one base Scribe naturally fitted to compose Satyres and invent Reproaches who made himself notorious by some licentious and infamous Pamphlets and so approved himself as fit for their service This man they encouraged by translating him from a needy Pedagogue to the Office of a Secretary to write that Scandalous Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Invective against the King's Meditations and to answer the learned Salmasius his Defence of Charles the First But all was in vain for those that were able to judge of Styles found it must be the same Pen which wrought these Meditations and drew those Letters which the Faction had published for His. Others that were not able to satisfie themselves by such a Censure were assured of it by the Relations of Colonel Hammond that was His Keeper who did attest to several Persous that he saw them in the King's hand heard Him read them and did see Him to correct them in his presence The Arch-Bishop of Armagh did also affirm to those he conversed with that he was employed by a Command from the King to get some of them out of the hands of the Faction for they were taken in His Cabinet at Naseby And Royston that Printed them did testifie to those that enquired of him that the King had sent to him the Michaelmas before His death to provide a Press for some Papers He should send to Him which were these together with a design for a Picture before the Book which at first was Three Crowns indented on a Wreath of Thorns but afterwards the King recalled that and sent that other which is now before His Book Thus these several Testimonies did secure the faith of the World against the Slanderers and made their endeavours as contemptible as themselves were hatefull While the Parricides were seeking for fresh Occasions to express their Malice the whole Kingdom was composed to Mourning and Lamentation for never any King not only of the English but of whatsoever Throne had His death lamented with greater Sorrows nor left the World with a higher regret of the People When the news of His Death was divulged Women with Child for grief cast forth the untimely Fruit of their Womb like Her that fell in Travel when the Glory was departed from Israel Others both Men and Women fell into Convulsions and swounding Fits and contracted so deep a Melancholy as attended them to the Grave Some unmindful of themselves as though they could not or would not live when their beloved Prince was slaughtered it is reported suddenly fell down dead The Pulpits were likewise bedewed with unsuborned Tears and some of those to whom the living King was for Episcopacie's sake less acceptable yet now bewailed the loss of Him when dead Children who usually seem unconcerned in publick Calamities were also affected with the news and became so prodigal of their Tears that for some time they refused comfort even some of those who sat as Judges could not forbear to mingle some Tears with His Blood when it was split Many composed Elegies and serious Poems to preserve the memory of His Vertues to express their own Griefs and to instruct the Mournings of others and their Passions made them above their usual Strain more elegant Many who writ the Acts of His time did vindicate His Honour and divulged the base Arts of His Enemies even while their Power was dreadful Men of all Sorts Degrees and Sects there being none among which He had not some Admirers then freely and without Envy recounted His several Vertues which now appeared as great as Mortality refined by Industry was capable of For though Prosperity makes the Severest tryals of Vertues yet Adversity renders them most Orient As the night best acquaints us with the Splendor of the Stars That which first challenged their Wonder was the Composure and Inclination of His Soul to Religion His Majesties Religion which He used not as an Artifice of Empire but as the Ornament and Comfort of a private breast for He never affected a Magnifick Piety nor a Pompous Vertue but laboured to approve Himself in secret to that God
who rewardeth openly All His Offices in this were like His Fortune far above those of other men His Devotion in Prayer was so raised that His Soul seemed to be wholly swallowed up in the Contemplation of that Majesty He did adore and as in an Ecstasie to have left His senses without its Adsistency An instance of this was given at the Death of the Duke of Buckingham the news of whose Murther being whispered to the King while He was at Prayers He took no notice of it although it was so weighty an Occurrence to have His prime Minister cut off in the busie Preparations for a great Design till He had finished His Addresses to Heaven and His Spirit was dismissed from the Throne of Grace to attend the Cares of that on Earth This was so clear an Evidence of a most fixed Devotion that those who built their Hopes upon His Reproaches slanderously imputed it to a secret Pleasure in the fall of him whose Greatness was now terrible to the Family that raised it which both His Majesties care of the Duke's Children afterwards as also the Consideration of His Condition did evince to be false and that the King neither hated him nor needed to fear him whom He could have ruined with a Frown and have obliged the People by permitting their fury to pass upon him Besides His Majesty's constant Diligence in those Duties did demonstrate that nothing but a Principle of Holiness which is alwayes uniform both moved and assisted Him in those sacred Performances to which He was observed to go with an exceeding Alacrity as to a ravishing pleasure from which no lesser Pleasures nor Business were strong enough for a Diversion In the morning before He went to Hunting His beloved Sport the Chaplains were before Day call'd to their Ministery and when He was at Brainford among the Noise of Arms and near the Assaults of His Enemies He caused the Divine that then waited to perform his accustomed Service before He provided for Safety or attempted at Victory and would first gain upon the Love of Heaven and then afterwards repell the Malice of men Those that were appointed by the Parliament to attend Him in His Restraints wondred at His constant Devotions in His Closet and no Artifice of the Army was so likely to abuse Him to a Credulity of their good Intentions as the Permission of the Ministery of His Chaplains in the Worship of God a mercy He valued to some of His Servants above that of enjoying Wife and Children At Sermons He carried Himself with such a Reverence and Attention that His Enemies which hated yet did even admire Him in it as if He were expecting new Instructions for Government from that God whose Deputy He was or a new Charter for a larger Empire and He was so careful not to neglect any of those Exercises that if on Tuesday mornings on which Dayes there used to be Sermons at Court He were at any distance from thence He would ride hard to be present at the beginnings of them When the State of His Soul required He was as ready to perform those more severe parts of Religion which seem most distastful to Flesh and Blood And he never refused to take to Himself the shame of those acts wherein He had transgressed that He might give Glory to His God For after the Army had forced Him from Holmeby and in their several removes had brought Him to Latmas an house of the Earl of Devonshire on Aug. 1. being Sunday in the morning before Sermon He led forth with Him into the Garden the Reverend Dr. Sheldon who then attended on Him and whom He was pleased to use as His Confessour and drawing out of His pocket a Paper commanded him to read it transcribe it and so to deliver it to Him again This Paper contained several Vows which He had obliged His Soul unto for the Glory of His Maker the advance of true Piety and the emolument of the Church And among them this was one that He would do Publick Penance for the Injustice He had suffered to be done to the Earl of Strafford His consent to those Injuries that were done to the Church of England though at that time He had yielded to no more than the taking away of the High Commission and the Bishops power to Vote in Parliament and to the Church of Scotland and adjured the Doctor that if ever he saw Him in a Condition to observe that or any of those Vows he should solicitously mind Him of the Obligations as he dreaded the guilt of the breach should lie upon his own Soul This voluntary submission to the Laws of Christianity exceeded that so memorable humiliation of the good Emperour Theodosius for he never bewailed the blood of those seven thousand men which in three hours space he caused to be spilt at Thessalonica till the resolution of St. Ambrose made him sensible of the Crime But the Piety of King Charles anticipated the severity of a Confessor for those offences to which He had been precipitated by the Violence of others This Zeal and Piety proceeded from the Dedication of His whole Soul to the Honour of His God for Religion was as Imperial in the Intellectual as in the Affectionate Faculties of it The Profession of the Church of England was His not so much by Education as Choice and He so well understood the Grounds of it that He valued them above all other Pretensions to Truth and was able to maintain it against all its Adversaries His Discourse with Henderson shews how just a Reverence He had for the Authority of the Catholick Church against the Pride and Ignorance of Schismaticks yet not to prostitute His Faith to the Adulterations of the Roman Infallibility and Traditions Nevertheless the most violent Slanders the Faction laboured to pollute Him with were those that rendred Him inclinable to Popery From which He was so averse that He could not forbear in His indearments to the Queen when He committed a secret to Her Breast which He would not trust to any other and when He admired and applauded Her affectionate Cares for His Honour and Safety in a Letter which He thought no Eye but Hers should have perused to let Her know that He still differ'd from Her in Religion for He says It is the only thing of Difference in Opinion betwixt Vs Malice made the Slanderers blind and they published this Letter to the World than which there could not be a greater Evidence imaginable of the King 's most secret Thoughts and Inward Sincerity nor a more shameful Conviction of their Impudence and damnable Falshood Nor did He only tell the Queen so but He made Her see it in His Actions For as soon as His Children were born it was His first Care to prevent the Satisfaction of their Mother in baptizing them after the Rites of Her own Church When He was to Die a time most seasonable to speak Truth especially by Him who all His Life
knew not how to Dissemble He declares His Profession in Religion to be the same with that which He found left by His Father King James How little the Papists credited what the Faction would have the World believe was too evident by the Conspiracies of their Fathers against His Life and Honour which the Discovery of Habernefield to whose relations the following practices against Him and the Church of England gained a belief brought to light They were mingled likewise among the Conspirators and both heated and directed their Fury against Him They were as importunate in their Calumnies of Him even after His Death as were the vilest of the Sectaries which they had never done could they have imagined Him to be theirs for His Blood would in their Calendar have out-shined the Multitude of their fictitious Saints For His sake they continued their hatred to His Family abetted the Usurpations of the following Tyrant by imposing upon the World new Rules of Obedience and Government invented fresh Calumnies for the Son and obstructed by various Methods His return to the Principality because He was Heir as well of the Faith as of the Throne of His Father Although this Honour is not to be denied to many Gallant Persons of that perswasion that their Loyalty was not so corrupted by their Faith to Rome but that they laboured to prevent the Father's Overthrow and to hasten the Son's Restitution He was not satisfied in being Religious as a particular Christian but would be so as a King and indeavoured that Piety might be as Universal as His Empire This He assaied by giving Ornaments and Assistances to the External Exercise and Parts of it which is the proper Province of a Magistrate whose Power reaches but to the Outward man that so carnal minds if they were not brought to an Obedience might yet to a Reverence and if men would not honour yet they should not despise Religion This He did in taking Care for the Place of Worship that Comeliness and Decency should be there conspicuous where the God of Order was to be adored And it was a Royal Undertaking to restore St. Paul's Church to its primitive strength and give it a beauty as magnificent as its Structure He taught men not to contemn the Dispensers of the Gospel because He had so great an esteem for them admitting some to His nearest Confidence and most Private Counsels as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the greatest Place of Trust as the Bishop of London to the Treasury consulting at once the Emolument of Religion whose Dictates are more powerfully impressed when the Minister is honoured by the Magistrate and the Benefit of the State which wise Princes had before found none to seek more faithfully if any did more prudently than Church-men Though a Voluntary Poverty did much contribute to the lustre and increase of the Church in the Purer times yet a necessitated would have destroyed it in a Corrupt age therefore the King to obstruct all access of Ruine that way secured her Patrimony and recovered as much as He could out of the Jaws of Sacrilege which together with time had devoured a great part of it His endeavours this way were so strong that the Faction in Scotland found no Artifice able to divert them but by kindling the flame of a Civil War the Criminals there seeking to adjust their Sacrilegious Acquisitions by Rebellious practices and to destroy that Church by force which His Majesty would not suffer them to torture with Famine In Ireland the Lord Lieutenant Wentworth by His Command and Instructions retrived very great Possessions which the tumults of that Nation had advantaged many greedy Persons to seize upon and would not suffer Sedition to be incouraged with the hopes of Impiety In England He countenanced those just Pleas which Oppressed Incumbents entred against Rapacious Patrons and this way many Curates were put into a Condition of giving Hospitality who before were contemptible in their Ministry because they were so in their Fortune His Enemies knew how Inviolable was the Faith of His Majesty in this and therefore pressed Him with nothing more to obstruct Peace than the Alienation of Church-Lands rather than which He did abandon His Life and parted sooner with His Blood than them He used to say Though I am sensible enough of the Dangers that attend My Care of the Church yet I am resolved to defend it or make it My Tomb-stone alluding to a Story which He would tell of a Generous Captain that said so of a Castle that was committed to His trust He had so perfect a Detestation of that Crime that it is said He scarce ever mentioned Henry the 8. without an Abhorrency of His Sacriledge He neglected the Advices of His own Party if they were negligent of the Welfare of the Church Those Concessions He had made in Scotland to the prejudice of the Church there were the subject of His grief and penitential Confessions both before God as appears in His Prayers and men For when the Reverend Dr. Morley now Lord Bishop of Winchester whom He had sent for to the Treaty in the Isle of Wight where he employed his diligence and prudence to search into the Intrigues and Reserves of the Commissioners had acquainted Him how the Commissioners were the more pertinacious for the abolishing of Episcopacy here because His Majesty had consented to it in Scotland and withall told Him what answer he himself had made to them That perchance the King was abused to those grants by a misinformation that that Act which was made in King James 's Minority against Bishops was yet unrepealed and that His Concession would but leave them where the Law had The King Answered It is true I was told so but whenever you hear that urged again give them this answer and say that you had it from the King Himself That when I did that in Scotland I sinned against My Conscience and that I have often repented of it and hope that God hath forgiven Me that great Sin and by God's grace for no Consideration in the World will I ever do so again He was careful of Uniformity both because He knew the Power of Just and Lawful Princes consisted in the Union of their Subjects who never are cemented stronger than by a Unity in Religion but Tyrants who measure their greatness by the weakness of their Vassals work that most effectually by caressing Schisms and giving a Licence to different Perswasions as the Usurpers afterwards did Besides He saw there was no greater Impediment to a sincere Piety because that Time and those Parts which might improve Godliness to a Growth were all Wasted and Corrupted in Malice and Slanders betwixt the Dissenters about forms He was more tender in preserving the Truths of Christianity than the Rights of His Throne For when the Commissioners of the Two Houses in the Isle of Wight importunately pressed Him for a Confirmation of the Lesser Catechism which the Assembly at Westminster
Shirts But said He I scorned to give them that pleasure as to tell them I wanted Thus all the strokes of Fortune upon His Magnanimous Soul were but like the breaking of Waves upon a Rock of Diamonds which cannot shake but only wash it to a greater Brightness But though He knew not how to submit to the Power of Men His Patience yet He would tremble under the Frowns of God His great Spirit made Him not unquiet or furious under the Corrections of the Almighty But with a wonderful Patience a Vertue not usual with Kings to whom the bounds of Equity seem a restraint and therefore are more restless in Injuries He did submit to the Will of His eternal Sovereign He never murmured nor repined at that Providence which had given Him plenty of tears to drink But His Meditations still breath the Justice of God and the Holiness of all His wayes with Him He would take Occasions from displeasing Occurrences to thank God that had sitted Him for the Condition he had brought Him unto For when He marched after His Carriage in pursuit of Essex into the West one of them broke in a very narrow Lane which made Him stop till an intolerable Shower of Rain came pouring upon Him from which that He might seek for a Shelter in the Neighbouring Village His Courtiers offered to hew Him out a way through the Hedge with their Swords but He refused and when they wondred at it He lifting up His hat and Eyes to worship the Fountain of All Grace said As God hath given me Afflictions to exercise My Patience so He hath given me Patience to bear My Afflictions The Indignity He received from Hotham provoked no Curse from Him nor could the Injuries from Scotch and English move Him to any thing more than Prayers for God's sanctifying them to Him He wanted not Temptations to Passion from His own Party for in a Letter to the Queen He tells Her that She could not but Pity Him in His Condition as to them yet He so managed their several Humours and so cherished their Expectations with Patience and Meekness that they quietly waited for a return of His Fortune When He was in His Captivity at Carisbrook under the strictest Restraint those that attended Him never almost observed Him but chearfull and pleasant in His Discourses and sometimes breaking out into pleasing Reparties and Jests When in the Treaty at Newport where He had occasions of Passion daily administred by the Perverseness to Peace of the Party He was to deal with one of the Commissioners was importunate with Him for more Concessions and minded Him of His saying That if there were another Treaty it should not lie in the power of the Devil's Malice to hinder Peace the King answered It would be so when there was a Treaty but as for this it could not be thought a Treaty but He was like the man in the Play that cryed out he had been in a Fray and when they asked him what Fray he replyed there was a Fray and no Fray for there were but three blows given and he took them all So this is a Treaty and not a Treaty for there be many Concessions but I have made them all Another time when He met one of the Presbyterian Ministers near His Chamber enquiring for Captain Titus who then waited on Him and had been faithful to Him in that Service the King told him He wondred he would have any more to do either with Titus or Timothy since he fared so ill in medling with them in his Disputes about Episcopacy the day before These shewed how free His Soul was and uncontrolled in the greatest and most displeasing perplexities He would never take any indirect courses to avoid the Cross nay He scrupled at such expedients as some deemed most conducing to His great end For at the Treaty in the Isle of Wight there being offered to Him an expedient to secure His Conscience and satisfie the Commissioners in the Propositions about the Church and it being urged by a great and faithful Counsellour that He must grant what possibly He could to preserve His own Life for the good of the Church for it was said her safety depended on His with a present and pious indignation He replyed Tell not Me what I should do for saving of My Life but what I may do with a safe Conscience God forbid that the Life or Safety of the Church should depend upon My Life or upon the Life of any mortal man and I thank God I have a Son whom I have reason to believe will love the Church as well as I do Another time a little after the Treaty was ended Dr. Morley shewing to Him a billet he had received by the Lady Wheeler the King's Laundress who often conveyed much Intelligence from an Officer of the Army that the King's Death was resolved on His Majesty answered I have done what I can to save My Life without losing of my Soul I can do I will do no more God's will be done In the Pomp of His Murther wherein He was made a Spectacle to the World Angels and Men no Tryals were ever greater nor ever were any better born the Parricides found it was easie to take away His Life but impossible His Honour and Patience His Passions being then so low and quiet that the natural Insirmity of His Speech did not in the least measure appear which uses to be most evident in the smallest discomposure of the Spirit After the Regicides had passed their Decree for His Assassination and caused Him to be persecuted with all the Indignities of the fanatick Souldiers there fell from Him nothing like Passion or Indignation but that He gave the Authors of those Impieties the title that was due to them for when my Lord of London came to Him which was not till eight a Clock on Saturday Night He told him My Lord that you came no sooner I believe was not your fault but now you are come because these Rogues pursue My Blood you and I must consult how I may best part with it Yet even this was spoken without any Fury or Violence for though all about Him was tumultuous with Horror Destruction and Contempt His Soul seemed unconcerned enjoyed a Calm Serenity and was full of its own Majesty This Vertue made Him forget He was a Prince born to Command and only consider that He was a Christian whose Calling obliges to Suffer He had found out a way to Glory by Humility For the supreme Power to which nothing can be added His Humility hath no better way to encrease than when secured of its own Greatness it humbleth it self And the Dignity of Princes is in nothing farther from Envy and Danger than in Humility He despised the converse of none though poor if honest He shewed to Sir Philip Warwick who had much of His Trust and Affections in the Isle of Wight a poor ragged Old Man and told him he was
it were to be bought by the Misery of the Nation and therefore rejected the Propositions of the Army as the Conditions of His Safety when tendred to Him the day before His Murther because they would inslave the People Neither would He expose particular persons to an evident and inevitable danger though it were to secure Himself for when my Lord Newburgh and his Noble Lady at whose house in Bagshot He did stay as He was removed from Carisbrook to Windsor proposed to Him a way to escape from that bloody Guard that hurried Him to the Slaughter He rejected it saying If I should get away they would cut you in Pieces and therefore would not try their design though it seemed feasible With these Arts He did seek to oblige the Community but the Faction's Slanders hindred the Success His Obliging Converse which they the more easily obstructed because the King never affected Popularity for that consists in an industrious pleasing of the People in minute and ordinary Circumstances but He alwayes endeavoured by a solid Vertue their real Happiness and therefore in confidence of that neglected a specious Compliance with the less beneficial humours of the Vulgar so that the Multitude who are taken with things of the lightest consideration could not sufficiently value Him being not able to apprehend His worth for a Statist observes Moderate Princes are alwayes admired but Heroick are never understood On particular Persons if not the sworn Creatures of the Conspirators and by Treason made inhumane He seldom failed by conversing to take them His Trophies in this kind even when He was despoiled of means to bribe their hopes were innumerable and those that engaged against Him ere they knew Him after their knowledge of Him did curse their Credulity and their prosperous Arms. A clear instance of this to mention no more was in Master Vines one of the Presbyterian Ministeâ—â— who are conceived to be too tenacious of a prejudice against those that dislike their Government that were sent to dispute against Episcopacy for he admiring the Abilities of the King which He manifested in asserting of it professed to Master Burroughs one whose Attendance the King required and found him faithful to the extremest dangers in those enterprises in which he several times engaged for His Safety how he had been deluded to unworthy thoughts of the King but was now convinced to an exceeding Reverence of Him and hoped so of others and earnestly solicited those that attended on Him to use all means to rescue Him from the intended Villany of the Army saying Our Happiness was great in such a Prince and our Misery in the Loss of Him would be unspeakable Yet He never courted although He won them but His passage to their hearts was through their brain and they first Admired and then Loved Him As He was powerful to gain so He was carefull to keep Friends His Fidelity Fidelity to the Publick and Private was His chiefest Care for He knew how necessary it is for Princes to be faithfull because it is so much their Interest that others should not be false Though it is a Mystery of Empire with other Kings to proportion their Faith to their Advantage yet He abhorred to promise any thing which He could not Religiously observe Some over-sine Politici would have had Him grant all the Desires of the Faction as the most immediate way to their Ruine for it was supposed they could never agree in dividing the Spoil and their dissensions would have opened a way for the recovery of His abandoned Rights But He was so constant in all that was good that He thought the purchase of Greatness too vile for the breach of His Faith and He hated those acquisitions which would give Him cause to blush This Heroick Expression often fell from Him Leave me to My Conscience and Honour and let what will befall Me. His Enemies knew this so natural that if they could make their Propositions repugnant to His Conscience they were sure no Peace should obstruct their Designs Nay He was faithful in those Stipulations wherein their first Breach would have justified a departure from His Promise though He saw this Vertue would be rewarded with His Murther For when some of His Attendants at Carisbrook daily importuned Him to provide for His Safety from the perfidious Violence of the Army which every day they had informations of He made this return Trouble not your selves I have the Parliaments Faith and Honour engaged for My remaining here in Honour Freedom and Safety and I will not dishonour My self by Escaping As He was to the Publick so to His Private Obligations No assaults could take the Duke of Buckingham from His Protection for though His foreign Enterprises required supplies of Money and the Faction would not let the Bills for Subsidies pass unless they might be gratified with the Dukes blood or Degradation from His Trust the King would not buy them with the Life or Dishonour of His Friend And although he fell afterwards as a Sacrifice to the Common hate for so the Assassinate pretended that he might give a Splendor to his Crime It being more specious to revenge the Publick than private Injuries yet was he not the Kings's Offering In the Case of the Earl of Strafford this Honour seemed to be clouded But Posterity will see that that Noble Person was rather ravished from Him on design by his Enemies to rob him of the Glory of Fidelity than deserted by Him for He never left him till the Earl did abandon himself And a Penitence for a Submission not Consent to the Rape made a Satisfaction for the Offence and repaired the damage of the Injury For His Majesties Tears over him will embalm and preserve his name and blood to the honour of Following Ages more than the remnant of his dayes would have administred to his Glory It would be an Injury to His other Vertues to mention His Chastity and Temperance His Chastity because it is an Infamy to be otherwise unless to let Posterity know that no injured Husband nor Dishonoured Family conspired to His Ruine but such who were engaged to Him for preserving all their Rights in those Relations unattempted and securing them by His own example He witnessed His Conjugal Chastity the day before His Death a time not to be spent in falsities which was too little for necessary Preparations to appear before the God of Truth when He commanded the Lady Elizabeth to tell her Mother that His thoughts had never strayed from Her and His Love should be the same to the Last The purity of His Speech likewise testified the Cleanness of His Heart for He did abhor all Obscene and wanton Discourse And He was so far from defiling the Beds that He would not pollute the Ears of His Subjects This Chastity found no Assaults from Intemperance for He never fed to Luxury but Health His Temperance His strong Constitution required large Meals but His
the Glory of that God whose Minister He was so His Soul was stored with a full Knowledge of the Nature of Things and easily comprehended almost all kinds of Arts that either were for Delight or of a Publick Use for He was ignorant of nothing but of what He thought it became Him to be negligent for many parts of Learning that are for the Ornament of a Private person are beneath the Cares of a Crowned Head He was well skilled in things of Antiquity could judge of Meddals whether they had the number of years they pretended unto His Libraries and Cabinets were full of those things on which length of Time put the Value of Rarities In Painting He had so excellent a Fancy that He would supply the defect of Art in the Workman and suddenly draw those Lines give those Airs and Lights which Experience and Practice had not taught the Painter He could judge of Fortifications and censure whether the Cannon were mounted to Execution or no. He had an excellent Skill in Guns knew all that belonged to their making The exactest Arts of building Ships for the most necessary uses of strength or good sailing together with all their furniture were not unknown to Him He understood and was pleased with the making of Clocks and Watches He comprehended the Art of Printing There was not any one Gentleman of all the three Kingdoms that could compare with Him in an Universality of Knowledge He incouraged all the Parts of Learning and He delighted to talk with all kind of Artists and with so great a Facility did apprehend the Mysteries of their Professions that He did sometime say He thought He could get His Living if Necessitated by any Trade He knew of but making of Hangings although of these He understood much and was greatly delighted in them for He brought some of the most curious Workmen from Foreign Parts to make them here in England His Writings shew what Notions He had gathered from the whole store of Learning His Eloquence which He cloathed with a Wonderfull and most charming Eloquence Which was unquestionably so great that those who endeavoured to despoil Him of His Civil Dominions granted Him a deserved Empire among famous Writers The Book of His Meditations is alone sufficient to make His Assassinates execrable to all that in any Age shall have a sense of Piety or a love to Wisdom and Eloquence For so great an affection in the Breasts of men do excellent Writings acquire for their Authors that though they may be otherwise blameable yet their Works render their Memories precious and the violent Deaths of such increase their Glory while they load their Murtherers with Ignominy All men especially among Posterity deeming so great Wits could not be cut off but to the Publick Injury and by Persons brutishly mad or by some horrid sins debauched to an Enmity with mankind So that all suture times shall admire and applaud His Writings against them and curse their Injustice to Him His Wisdom was not only Speculative in His Writings but also Practical in His Counsels His Political Prudence None found out better means for accomplishing a Design provided safer expedients for the Ressorts of Difficulties or more clearely foresaw the Event at a Distance nor were any Counsels so prosperous as His own when they were vigorously prosecuted by those whom He intrusted with the Execution and He seldom miscarried but when He inclined to follow the Advices of others as He did in that inauspicious Attempt to take Gloucester wherein He forsook His own Reasons which He urged with all possible Evidence of Success to march towards London He saw into the Intrigues of His Enemies and had not the Treacheries which being secret are above the Caution of Humane Nature of some that followed Him opened to them His Designs He had by the Ordinary Course of Providence covered them with the shame both of Imprudence and Overthrow Those Miseries that the Faction after they got into Power brought upon the Nation and the Events of their destructive Enterprises were discovered and foretold by Him in the very beginnings to the deluded World who notwithstanding were Fatally blinded to chuse their own Ruine Whensoever His Secretaries had drawn up by the Direction of the Council Declarations or any other Papers and offered them to His perusal though both they and the Council had done their parts yet He would alwayes with His own hand correct them both as to Matter and Form He commonly using these words when He took the Pen in His hand Come I am a good Cobler and the Corrections were acknowledged by them all to be both for the greater lustre and advantage of the Writings His Instructions to His Ambassadors Commissioners Deputies were so full of Wisdom and such prudent provisions for all the Ressorts of those they were to treat with that there was nothing to be supplyed on their parts to make their Negotiations happy but seasonable Applications or a fortune to deal with reasonable men It was the Observation of a Noble Person who was dear to Him for his Wisdom and Faithluiness and was of His Council in all His Troubles that had the King been a Counsellor to any other Prince He would have gained the Esleem of an Oracle all His Proposals being grounded upon the greatest Reason and proper to the Business consulted about Those that have been forward to interpret His Actions by the Suceess and from thence have proceeded to the Censure of His Prudence considered not the numerous Difficulties in forming any Resolution nor the fallacious representations of Affairs to Him but only looked upon His unprosperous Resolves according to the Fate of unhappy Counsels which is to have that condemned which was put in Execution and that praised as best which was never tryed Thus was He made for Empire as well as born unto it and had all those Excellencies which The Censure of His Fortune if we had been free to chuse must have determined our Election of a Sovereign to Him alone there being nothing wanting in Him that the severest Censors of Princes do number among the Requisites of a compleat Monarch It was therefore the wonder of those who conceive every man to be the Artificer of His own Fortune how it came to pass that He had not that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an uninterrupted current of Success which some men reckon among the constitutives of Happiness in all His Enterprises To Others that impute all our affairs here below to an inviolable Method of the Decrees of Heaven which yet they acknowledge just though dark it seemed one of the Riddles of Providence that a King of so great Vertues should yet be calamitous for let Posterity judge how great and how good this Prince was that could not be ruined even after a War which usually embitters the Spirits of those that are molested by it and a total Overthrow whose common Consequent is Contempt but by so various and
Childhood was never sick Once He had the small Pox but the Malignity of it was so small that it altered not His Stomach nor put Him to the abstinence of one Meal neither did it detain Him above a fortnight under the Care of His Physicians He was the Father of Four Sons and Five Daughters His Children 1. Charles James born at Greenwich on Wednesday May 13. 1628. but died almost as soon as born having been first Christned 2. Charles Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales born at Saint James's May 29. 1630. whom after a fellowship in the Sufferings of His Father some brave but unsuccessful attempts to recover the Rights of His Inheritance and twelve years various fortune abroad God was pleased by a wonderful Providence without blood or ruine to conduct to His Native Throne and make Him the Restorer of Peace to a People wearied and wasted almost to a Desolation by several changes of Government and Variety of reproachful Usurpers that they became the Scorn of Neighbour◠〈◊〉 Nations and the miserable Example of 〈…〉 quiet Community so torn in pieces by Factions in the State and Schisms in the Church each party mutually armed to suppress its contrary and destroy the publick that it was impossible for them to re-unite or consent in common to seek the benefits of Society untill they had submitted to Him as to the common Soul to be governed by Him in the paths of Justice He is now and long may He be so our Dread Sovereign CHARLES II. 3. James born in the same place Octob. 13. Anno 1633. entituled Duke of York by His Majesty's Command at His Birth and afterwards so Created He was a Companion of His Brother in Exile spending His time abroad both in the French and Spanish Camps with Glory and returned with Him into England 4. Henry Duke of Gloucester born in the same place July 8. 1639. who after the Death of His Father was by the Parricides permitted to go beyond Sea to His Mother with the promise of an Annual Pension which they never intended to pay A very hopeful Prince who resisted the strong practices of some in the Queen's Court to seduce Him to the Church of Rome which His Brother hearing sent for Him into Flanders and He also attended Him to His Throne but not long after died of the Small Pox Sept. 13. Anno 1660. 5. Mary born on Novemb. 4. Anno 1631. married to Count William of Nassau Eldest Son to Henry Prince of Orange by whom she was left a Widow and a short time after the Mother of the now Prince of Orange and coming over to visit her Brothers and the place of her Nativity she died also of the Small Pox Decemb. 24. Anno 1660. 6. Elizabeth born Jan. 28. Anno 1635. who survived her Father but lived not to see the Restoring the Royal Family dying at Carisbrook the place of her Father's Captivity being removed thither by the Murtherers that the place might raise a grief to end her Dayes 7. Anne born March 17. Anno 1637. died before her Father 8. Katharine who died almost as soon as born 9. Henrietta born at Exeter June 16. Anno 1644. in the midst of the Wars conveyed not long after by the Lady Dalkeith into France to her Mother and is now married to the Duke of Anjou only Brother to the King of France Having left this Issue He died in the forty ninth year of His Age and 23. of His Reign having lived Much rather than Long and left so many great and difficult Examples as will busie Good Princes to imitate and Bad ones to Wonder at A man in Office and mind like to that Spiritual Being which the more men understand the more they Admire and Love and that may be said of Him which was said of that Excellent Roman who sought Glory by Vertue Homo Virtuti simillimus per omnia Ingenio Diis quà m Hominibus propior Qui nunquam rectè fecit ut rectè facere videretur sed quia aliter facere non poterat CuÃque id solum visum est Rationem habere quod haberet Justitiam Omnibus humanis vitiis Immunis semper in Potestate sua Fortunam habuit Vell. Paterc lib. 2. AN APPENDIX THat the Piety and Charity of this Excellent and Incomparable PRINCE may yet farther appear it will not I presume be unacceptable to the Reader to Annex some few of His Majesties Select Meditations and Declarations such especially as were Penned a little before His Martyrdom when His Soul seemed to have been inspired with a bigger Sense of His approaching Fate and at once by a Generous Scorn to trample upon the Glories of the World and to Triumph over the most Insolent Villanies of His Enemies Nor will the Reader repent the taking them in His own Words nothing being able to express the Sense of His Mind like the Native Elegancy of His own Pen. Vpon their denying His MAJESTY the Attendance of the Bishop of LONDON Bishop of SALISBVRY And HIS Chaplains Doctor Sheldon Doctor Sanderson Doctor Hammond Doctor Turner Doctor Holdsworth Doctor Heywood WHen Providence was pleased to deprive Me of all other civil Comforts and secular Attendants I thought the absence of them all might best be supplyed by the attendance of some of my Chaplains whom for their Function I reverence and for their Fidelity I have cause to love By their Learning Piety and Prayers I hoped to be either better enabled to sustain the want of all other enjoyments or better fitted for the recovery and use of them in God's good time so reaping by their Pious help a spiritual harvest of Grace amidst the thorns and after the plowings of temporal Crosses The truth is I never needed or desired more the service and assistance of men judiciously Pious and soberly Devout The Solitude they have confined Me unto adds the Wilderness to my Temptations For the company they obtrude upon Me is more sad than any Solitude can be If I had asked my Revenues my Power of the Militia or any one of my Kingdoms it had been no wonder to have been denied in those things where the evil Policy of Men forbids all just restitution lest they should confess an injurious Usurpation But to deny Me the Ghostly comfort of my Chaplains seems a greater Rigor and Barbarity than is ever used by Christians to the meanest Prisoners and greatest Malefactors whom though the Justice of the Law deprives of worldly comforts yet the Mercy of Religion allows them the benefit of their Clergy as not aiming at once to destroy their Bodies and to damn their Souls But My Agony must not be relieved with the presence of any one good Angel for such I account a Learned Godly and discreet Divine and such I would have all mine to be They that envy my being a King are loth I should be a Christian while they seek to deprive Me of all things else they are afraid I should save my Soul Other
sence Charity it self can hardly pick out of those many harsh Repulses I received as to that Request so often made for the attendance of some of my Chaplains I have sometime thought the Unchristianness of those denials might arise from a displeasure some men had to see Me prefer My own Divines before their Ministers whom though I respect for that worth and piety which may be in them yet I cannot think them so proper for My present Comforters or Physicians who have some of them at least had so great an influence in occasioning these Calamities and inflicting these Wounds upon Me. Nor are the soberest of them so apt for that Devotional compliance and juncture of hearts which I desire to bear in those holy Offices to be performed with Me and for Me since their Judgements standing at a distance from Me or in jealousie of Me or in opposition against Me their Spirits cannot so harmoniously accord with Mine or Mine with theirs either in Prayer or other holy Duties as is meet and most comfortable whose golden Rule and bond of Perfection consists in that of mutual Love and Charity Some Remedies are worse than the Disease and some Comforters more miserable than Misery it self when like Job's Friends they seek not to fortifie ones mind with Patience but perswade a man by betraying his own Innocency to despair of God's Mercy and by justifying their Injuries to strengthen the hands and harden the hearts of Insolent Enemies I am so much a friend to all Church-men that have any thing in them beseeming that Sacred Function that I have hazarded My own Interest chiefly upon Conscience and Constancy to maintain their Rights whom the more I looked upon as Orphans and under the Sacrilegious eyes of many cruel and rapacious Reformers the more I thought it my duty to appear as a Father and a Patron for them and the Church Although I am very unhandsomly requited by some of them who may live to repent no less for My Sufferings than their own ungrateful Errors and that injurious Contempt and Meanness which they have brought upon their Calling and Persons I pity all of them I despise none only I thought I might have leave to make choice of some for my special Attendants who were best approved in My Judgement and most suitable to My Affection For I held it better to seem undevout and to hear no mens Prayers than to be forced or seem to comply with those Petitions to which the Heart cannot consent nor the Tongue say Amen without contradicting a mans own Understanding or belying his own Soul In Devotions I love neither Profane Boldness nor Pious Nonsense but such an humble and judicious Gravity as shews the Speaker to be at once considerate of God's Majesty the Churches Honour and his own Vileness both knowing what things God allows him to ask and in what manner it becomes a Sinner to supplicate the Divine Mercy for himself and others I am equally scandalized with all Prayers that sound either imperiously or rudely or passionately as either wanting Humility to God or Charity to Men or Respect to the Duty I confess I am better pleased as with studied and premeditated Sermons so with such publick Forms of Prayer as are fitted to the Churches and every Christians daily and common necessities because I am by them better assured what I may joyn my Heart unto than I can be of any mans Extemporary sufficiency which as I do not wholly exclude from publick occasions so I allow its just liberty and use in private and devout retirements where neither the solemnity of the Duty nor the modest regard to others do require so great exactness as to the outward manner of performance Though the light of Understanding and the fervency of Affection I hold the main and most necessary requisites both in constant and occasional solitary and social Devotions So that I must needs seem to all equal minds with as much Reason to prefer the service of My own Chaplains before that of their Ministers as I do the Liturgy before the Directory In the one I have been alwayes educated and exercised in the other I am not yet Catechised nor acquainted And if I were yet should I not by that as by any certain Rule and Canon of Devotion be able to follow or find out the indirect extravagancies of most of those men who highly cry up that as a piece of rare composure and use which is already as much despised and disused by many of them as the Common-Prayer sometimes was by those men a great part of whose piety hung upon that popular pin of railing against and contemning the Government and Liturgy of this Church But I had rather be condemned to the woe of Vae soli than to that of Vae vobis Hypocritae by seeming to pray what I do not approve It may be I am esteemed by my Deniers sufficient of My self to discharge my Duty to God as a Priest though not to Men as a Prince Indeed I think both Offices Regal and Sacerdotal might well become the same Person as anciently they were under one name and the united rights of primogeniture Nor could I follow better precedents if I were able than those two eminent Kings David and Solomon not more famous for their Scepters and Crowns than one was for devout Psalms and Prayers the other for his divine Parables and Preaching whence the one merited and assumed the name of a Prophet the other of a Preacher Titles indeed of greater honour where rightly placed than any of those the Roman Emperours affected from the Nations they subdued it being infinitely more glorious to convert Souls to Gods Church by the Word than to conquer men to a subjection by the Sword Yet since the order of Gods Wisdom and Providence hath for the most part alwayes distinguished the Gifts and Offices of Kings and Priests of Princes and Preachers both in the Jewish and Christian Churches I am sorry to find My self reduced to the necessity of being both or enjoying neither For such as seek to deprive Me of my Kingly Power and Soveraignty would no less enforce Me to live many months without all Prayers Sacraments and Sermons unless I become My own Chaplain As I owe the Clergy the protection of a Christian KING so I desire to enjoy from them the benefit of their Gifts and Prayers which I look upon as more prevalent than My own or other mens by how much they flow from Minds more enlightned and Affections less distracted than those which are encumbred with Secular affairs besides I think a greater Blessing and acceptableness attends those Duties which are rightly performed as proper to and within the limits of that Calling to which God and the Church have specially designed and consecrated some men And however as to that Spiritual Government by which the Devout Soul is subject to Christ and through his Merits daily offers it self and its services to God every private
Consciences too while they carried on unreasonable demands first by Tumults after by Armies Nothing makes mean spirits more cowardly-cruel in managing their usurped Power against their lawfull Superious than this the Guilt of their unjust Vsurpation notwithstanding those specious and popular pretensions of Justice against Delinquents applyed only to disguise at first the monstrousness of their designs who despaired indeed of possessing the power and profits of the Vineyard till the Heir whose right it is be cast out and slain With them my greatest Fault must be that I would not either destroy My self with the Church and State by my Word or not suffer them to do it unresisted by the Sword whose covetous Ambition no Concessions of Mine could ever yet either satisfie or abate Nor is it likely they will ever think that Kingdom of Brambles which some men seek to erect at once weak sharp and fruitless either to God or Man is like to thrive till watered with the Royal Blood of those whose right the Kingdom is Well God's will be done I doubt not bu◠my Innocency will find him both my Protector and my Advocate who is my only Judge whom I own as King of Kings not only for the eminency of His Power and Majesty above them but also for that singular Care and Protection which he hath over them who knows them to be exposed to as many Dangers being the greatest Patrons of Law Justice Order and Religion on Earth as there be either Men or Devils which love Confusion Nor will he suffer those men long to prosper in their Babel who build it with the Bones and cement it with the Blood of their KINGS I am confident they will find Avengers of my Death among themselves the Injuries I have sustained from them shall be first punished by them who agreed in nothing so much as in opposing Me. Their impatience to bear the loud cry of my Blood shall make them think no way better to expiate 〈◊〉 than by shedding theirs who with them most thirsted after Mine The sad Confusions following my Destruction are already presaged and confirmed to Me by those I have lived to see since my Troubles in which God alone who only could hath many wayes pleaded my Cause not sustering them to go unpunished whose Confederacy in Sin was their only Security who have cause to fear that God will both further divide and by murual Vengeance afterward destroy them My greatest conquest of Death is from the Power and Love of Christ who hath swallow'd up Death in the Victory of his Resurrection and the glory of his Ascension My next Comfort is that he gives Me not only the honour to imitate his Example in suffering for Righteousness sake though obscured by the foulest charges of Tyranny and Injustice but also that Charity which is the noblest Revenge upon and Victory over my Destroyers by which I thank God I can both forgive them and pray for them that God would not impute my Blood to them further than to convince them what need they have of Christs Blood to wash their Souls from the guilt of shedding Mine At present the Will of my Enemies seems to be their only rule their Power the measure and their Success the exactor of what they please to call Justice while they flatter themselves with the fancy of their own Safety by My Danger and the security of their Lives and Designs by My Death forgetting that as the greatest temptations to Sin are wrapped up in seeming Prosperities so the severest Vengeances of God are then most accomplished when men are suffered to compleat their wicked purposer I bless God I pray not so much that this bitter cup of a Violent Death may pass from Me as that of his Wrath may pass from all those whose hands by deserting me are sprinkled or by acting and consenting to my Death are embrued with my Blood The Will of God hath confined and concluded Mine I shall have the pleasure of dying without any pleasure of desired Vengeance This I think becomes a Christian toward his Enemies and a King toward his Subjects They cannot deprive Me of more than I am content to lose when God sees fit by their hands to take it from Me whose Mercy I believe will more than infinitely recompence whatever by Mans Injustice he is pleased to deprive me of The Glory attending my Death will far surpass all I could enjoy or conceive in Life I shall not want the heavy and envied Crowns of this world when my God hath mercifully crowned and consummated his Graces with Glory and exchanged the shadows of my Earthly Kingdoms among men for the substance of that Heavenly Kingdom with Himself For the censures of the world I know the sharp and necessary Tyranny of my Destroyers will sufficiently confute the Calumnies of Tyranny against Me I am perswaded I am happy in the judicious Love of the ablest and best of my Subjects who do not only pity and pray for Me but would be content even to die with Me or for Me. These know how to excuse my Failings as a Man and yet to retain and pay their Duty to Me as their KING there being no Religious necessity binding any Subjects by pretending to punish infinitely to exceed the faults and errours of their Princes especially there where more than sufficient Satisfaction hath been made to the publick the enjoyment of which private Ambitions have hitherto frustrated Others I believe of softer tempers and less advantaged by my Ruine do already feel sharp Convictions and some remorse in their Consciences where they cannot but see the proportions of their evil dealings against Me in the measure of God's retaliations upon them who cannot hope long to enjoy their own thumbs and toes having under pretence of paring others nails been so cruel as to cut off their chiefest strength The punishment of the more insolent and obstinate may be like that of Korah and his Complices at once mutining against both Prince and Priest in such a method of Divine Justice as is not ordinary the Earth of the lowest and meanest People opening upon them and swallowing them up in a just disdain of their ill-gotten and worse-used Authority upon whose support and strength they chiefly depended for their building and establishing their Designs against Me the Church and State My chiefest comfort in Death consists in my Peace which I trust is made with God before whose exact Tribunal I shall not fear to appear as to the Cause so long disputed by the Sword between Me and my causless Enemies where I doubt not but his Righteous Judgement will confute their Fallacy who from worldly Success rather like Sophisters than sound Christians draw those popular Conclusions for God's Approbation of their actions whose wise Providence we know oft permits many events which his revealed Word the only clear safe and fixed Rule of good Actions and good Consciences in no sort approves I am confident the Justice of my
pretending to preserve Me have meditated nothing but my Ruine O deal not with them as blood-thirsty and deceitful men but overcome their Cruelty with Thy Compassion and My Charity And when Thou makest inquisition for my Blood O sprinkle their polluted yet penitent Souls with the Blood of thy Son that thy destroying Angel may pass over them Though they think my Kingdomes on Earth too little to entertain at once both them and Me yet let the capacious Kingdom of thy infinite Mercy at last receive both Me and my Enemies When being reconciled to Thee in the Blood of the same Redeemer we shall live far above these Ambitious desires which beget such mortal Enmities When their hands shall be heaviest and cruelest upon Me O let Me fall into the arms of thy tender and eternal Mercies That what is cut off of my Life in this miserable moment may be repayed in thy ever-blessed Eternity Lord let thy Servant depart in Peace for my eyes have seen thy Salvation Vota dabunt quae bella negârunt M. S. Sanctissimi Regis Martyris CAROLI Primi Siste Viator Luge Obmutesce Mirare Memento CAROLI ILLIUS Nominis pariter insignissimae Pietatis PRIMI MAGNAE BRIT ANNIAE ILLIUS Qui Rebellium Perfidiâ primò deceptus Dein Perfidorum Rabie percussus Inconcussus tamen LEGUM FIDEI DEFENSOR Schismaticorum Tyrannidi succubuit Anno Salutis Humanae MDCXLVIII Servitutis Britannicae Primo Felicitatis Suae Primo Coronâ Terrestri spoliatus Coelesti donatus Sed Sileant periturae Tabellae Perlege RELIQUIAS verè Sacras CAROLINAS In Queis Ipsa Sui Iconem Aere perenniorem vivaciùs exprimit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 CAROLI Primi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epitaphium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 SIstas sacrilegum Pedem Viator Nè forsan temeres sacros sepulchri Augusti Cineres Repôstus hîc est In Terrae Gremio Decor Stupórque Humani Generis Senex Infans Prudens scilicet Innocén sque Princeps Regni praesidium Ruina Regni Vitâ Praesidium Ruina Morte Quem Regem potiùs Patrém ve dicam O Patrem priùs deinde Regem Regem quippe Suî Patrémque Regni Hic Donúmque Dei DeÃque Cura Quem Vitáque refert refértque Morte Ringente Satanâ Canente Coelo Diro in Pegmate Gloriae Theatro Et Christi Cruce Victor Securi Baptistae emicuit Ruina Felix Quâ Divum Carolus secutus Agnum Et postliminio domum vocatus Primaevae Patriae fit Inquilinus Sic Lucis priùs Hesperus Cadentis Resplendet modò Phosphorus Reversae Hic Vindex Fidei sacer Vetustae Cui par est nihil nihil secundum Naturae Typus absolutioris Fortunae Domitor ferendo suae Qui quantum Calicis bibit tremendi Tantundem sibi Gloriae reportat Regum Maximus unicúsque Regum In quo Res minima est fuisse Regem Solus qui superâ locatus Arce Vel Vitâ poterit frui priore Quum sint Relliquiae Cadaver Umbra Tam sacri Capitis vel ipsa sacra Ipsis Eulogiis coinquinata Quaeque ipsum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prophanat Sistas sacrilegum Pedem Viator Tho. Pierce D. D. Coll. Magd. apud Oxon. Praeses An EPITAPH upon KING CHARLES SO falls that stately Cedar while it stood That was the onely glory of the Wood Great CHARLES thou earthly God celestial Man Whose life like others though it were a span Yet in that span was comprehended more Than Earth hath waters or the Ocean shore Thy heavenly virtues Angels should rehearse It is a the am too high for humane Verse He that would know thee right then let him look Vpon thy rare incomparable Book And read it o're and o're which if he do Hee 'l find thee King and Priest and Prophet too And sadly see our loss and though in vain With fruitless wishes call thee back again Nor shall oblivion sit upon thy Herse Though there were neither Monument nor Verse Thy Suff'rings and thy Death let no man name It was thy Glory but the Kingdoms Shame J. H. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE CONTENTS Anno MDC KIng CHARLES His Lineage and Birth Page 1. MDCII A presage of His Succession to the Crown p. 3. MDCIV. He is Created Duke of York His proficiency in his Studies p. 4. MDCXII His Succession in the Dukedom of Cornwall His Juvenile Exercises p. 5. MDCXVI He is Created Prince of Wales p. 6. MDCXVIII The Death of Queen Anne His great improvement in Theological Controversies p. 9. MDCXXII His Journey into Spain and the success of it p. 10. MDCXXIII His Return The Proposal of a Match with France p. 14. MDCXXV King James his death His Succession in the Kingdom The State of it at his first coming to it His Coronation p. 15. MDCXXVII The Expedition to the Isle of Rhee Assistance afforded to Rochel p. 23. MDCXXX The Birth of Prince CHARLES p. 29. MDCXXXII Tumults in Ireland Lord Strafford sent Deputy thither p. 32. MDCXXXIII His Journey into Scotland and Coronation there p. 33. MDCXXXIV The business of Ship-money p. 36. MDCXXXVII Troubles began in Scotland and upon what pretence p. 40. MDCXXXIX An agreement made with the Scots p. 44. MDCXL An Army raised against the Scots A Parliament called p. 45. MDCXLI The Arraignment and Execution of the Earl of Strafford The Factious Designs of the Zealots in the Parliament p. 50. The Rebellion in Ireland p. 64. The Queens departure out of England p. 80. The Kings withdrawment from London p. 83. His repulse at Hull by Hotham p. 88. Armiesraised on both sides p. 97. The Battel at Edge-hill p. 102. MDCXLIII The Queens return into England The Kings Successes p. 105. MDCXLIV The Kings Victories over the Rebels p. 113. The Tryal and Execution of the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury p. 118. His Character p. 120. MDCXLV The Battel at Naseby and its ill influence upon the Kings Party p. 128. MDCXLVI The Kings withdrawment to the Scottish Army p. 133. MDCXLVII The King removed from Holmby to Hampton-Court His flight into the Isle of Wight p. 139. MDCXLVIII The Treaty in the Isle of Wight p. 164. A Court Erected for the Tryal of the King p. 179. His Tryal and Carriage there p. 192. His Martyrdom and Burial p. 201. His Incomparable Book p. 208. His Character His Religion p. 212. His Justice p. 223. His Clemency p. 225. His Fortitude p. 229. His Patience p. 232. His Humility p. 237. His choice of Ministers of State p. 239. His Affection to his People p. 240. His obliging Converse p. 243. His Fidelity p. 244. His Chastity p. 246. His Temperance p. 247. His Frugality p. 248. His Intellectual abilities p. 250. His skill in all Arts. p. 252. His Eloquence p. 254. His Political Prudence p. 255. The censure of his Fortune p. 257. A presage of His Fall and the future State of the Royal Family p. 259. His Recreations p. 260. The features of His Body p. 262. His Children p. 263. An Appendix p. 267. His Select Meditations upon the denial of the Attendance of His Chaplains p. 268. Penitential Meditations and Vows in His Solitude at Holmby p. 281. His Declaration after the Votes of no further Address p. 287. Meditations upon Death after the Votes of Non-Address and His Majesties closer Imprisonment in Carisbrook Castle p. 293. His Epitaph 312. His Epitaph by Doctor Pierce p. 313. Another Epitaph by J.H. p. 315. THE END Lately Printed for Richard Royston at the Angel in Amen-Corner THE Estate of the EMPIRE or an Abridgement of the Laws and Government of GERMANY farther shewing what Condition the EMPIRE was in when the Peace was Concluded at Munster Also the several Fights Battels and Desolation of Cities during the War in that EMPIRE And also of the GOLDEN BVLL In 8º The Sicilian Tyrant Or The Life and Death of AGATHOCLES With some Reflections on our Modern Usurpers 8º The ROYAL MARTYR and the Dutiful Subject in two SERMONS By Guilbert Burnet 4º