and destroy them The same Council was again held in the house of Hieronimo de Gondy at S. Clou and the time and order of the bloody Marriage Banquet to be served in at the Nuptials of the King of Navar with the Lady Margaret the French Kings Sister almost in the same manner and order as it was afterwards put in execution on Bartholomews Day Anno Christi 1572. In which were most inhumanely murthered of men women and children many also of them being great and honourable Personages of either Sex about thirty thousand And while the Duke of Guise was prosecuting that most inhumane Butchery a Cabinet Council was held in the Queen-Mothers Chamber whether it were not necessary that both the Duke and the rest of his Family who were then present should not be dispatched at the same time in that disorderly tumult King Charles himself never saw good day after this bloody Massacre though the Court-Sycophants had promised him that it should prove the first happy day of his absolute Monarchy For though he had been long drenched in Lust a sin seldom separated from a Persecutor by his ordinary Adultery with a mean Wench of Orleance of whom he begat Charles of Engolism afterwards Earl of Auvern And though he had been trained up by his Mother to see the slaughter of Beasts and ever in his Chases had been accustomed to bath his hands in the Blood of the slain Game which might have served to stupifie his Conscience as they did inflame his fierce and cruel nature yet a very stinging remorse in his Conscience did ever pursue and haunt him after that merciless slaughter brought about chiefly by his own swearing and forswearing by which the King of Navar and the Admiral Coligni were deceived His eyes ever rolled up and down uncertainly in the Day-time with fear and suspition and his sleep was usually interrupted in the night with dismal Dreams and Apparitions like our King Richard the Third of England after he had murthered his two Nephews in the Tower Nay though he survived that Massacre not fully two years yet had he in that time plotted the death of the said Henry Duke of Guise and the removal of the Queen-Mother and her Instruments from the Helm of State But as he a little before the Massacre had poisoned that incomparable Princess for Learning and Piety Joan Queen of Navar So did his Mother or the Duke of Guise by way of prevention or anticipation minister to him his fatal sharp Phisick of which after many and grievous torments he deceased upon Whitsunday Anno Christi 1574. being not full twenty five years old 150. The Queen-Mother the Kings two Brethren the Cardinal and the Duke of Guise that had not only joined with him in his Persecution but encouraged him to it they still survived and for ought men saw were firmly setled in Peace and Prosperity Though Guise might have taken warning by the Death of Claude Duke of Aumal his Brother slain with a Musket-Bullet from the walls of Rochel as he lay in Siege before it Anno Christi 1573. 151. Henry his Brother who succeeded King Charles was not long before chosen King of Poland where he then was but hearing of the Death of his Brother he clandestinly stole away from that Kingdom to return to France In his return the good Emperor Maximilian the Second and the Venetian State earnestly advised him to maintain the former Edicts of Pacification inviolably and not force the Consciences of men in matters of Religion Of the same Opinion also were all his wisest Councellors who saw plainly that the encreasing of the Protestants was the only means now left under Heaven to draw the Pope and his Conclave to yield some Reformation of the Church which it needed exceedingly But his Mother advised him by all means to root out the Professors of the truth by Fire and Sword And others there were of loose and Atheistical Lives as Henry Duke of Guise Lewis the Cardinal of Guise Renalt Villoclare A man saith the incomparable Monsieur de Thou fatally preferr'd to be an attendant upon this King by his Mother and diverse others who perswaded the King to break the aforesaid Edicts for Pacification and never to sheath his Sword till he had utterly ruined all the Protestants in France And the King being of a weak and degenerate Spirit the House of Guise being the Arch-enemies of the Gospel became at length so potent and triumphed so notoriously over the impotency of the King that at last they forced him to seek to those very Protestants for support against whom he had taken a Solemn Oath for their utter destruction Infinite almost were the Treasures which he spent upon his Minions and Pleasures His expenses upon his Dogs only amounted in those times to twenty thousand pounds yearly at the least but most was exhausted in the prosecution of his Wars against the Protestants 152. Guise and his Faction now grown strong and assured of support from King Philip the Second of Spain after he had expelled his King out of Paris and heaped a world of other insolent affronts upon him was drawn by him Anno Christi 1588. to the Assembly then held at Blois He came thither with his Brother Lewis Lorainer Cardinal of Guise and Charles Prince of Ionvile his Son upon the same Royal Assurance of safety with which Charles the Ninth had by his advise deceived the Protestants before the abhorred Massacre in the year 1572. But during this Assembly this Duke of Guise was slain against the Publick Faith given him not only within the Castle of Blois but in that very room wherein sixteen years before he had advised the bloody Massacre of Paris to be executed Two circumstances also do add much horror to the punishment it self One was that he was but newly risen from the bed of his adulterate Lust having not been able before this night to conquer the chastity of a Gentlewoman that waited on the Queen-Mother and therefore was so eager in reaping the fruits of his long Siege that he came not to the Council Chamber till he was oft sent for and even then scarcely ready The other was in the manner of his first wound which was given him in his Throat and immediately caused the Blood so abundantly to stream out of his Mouth as he never had time so much as to call upon God for mercy or forgiveness but spent his last minute in endeavouring to revenge himself upon his Murtherers 153. A while after the Cardinal of Guise his Brother who had been a great Gamester at Cards and Dice perished also in the same Castle of Blois by a violent Death Katherine de Medices the Queen-Mother who had been the chief cause for thirty years together of the shedding of so much innocent Blood being present at the same time in the said Castle stormed secretly that so great an action should be entred into and effected without her advice And when she heard that
the Protestants began to meet more publickly and to profess the Truth more openly than before The Arch-Bishop thereupon renews his former Suit to the Son as he had before successfully pressed upon the Father In particular he first aimed at the destruction of Sir John Oldcastle See his Life in my second Volume of Lives who had most affronted him He by reason of his great Alliances and the favour of his King who called him His Knight might have expected exemption from their Tyranny But they prevailed with the King as saith Arch-Bishop Parker Rex virum clarum sibique familiarissimum Episcoporum potestati carnisioinae permisit The King gave up this famous man and who was dear to himself to the power and destruction of the Bishops And yet it pleased God that he outlived this persecuting Arch-Prelate two years at least For the Arch-Bishop having murthered many godly Saints in King Henry the Fourths time and being a great stickler in state affairs having long before procured himself to be made Lord Chancellour of England and lastly in a Synod held by himself at Rochester having forbidden the reading of the Scriptures in English and limited Preachers under an heavy censure what they should treat of in the Pulpit was soon cut off himself by the immediate hand of God after he had condemned that warlike Kinght Sir John Old-Castle Lord Cobham before he could see him executed For his Tongue was so swoln and benummed that he could neither swallow nor speak some days before his Death It being saith one the just Judgment of God upon him and may be a warning to all other wicked Popish Prelates that as he had muzled up the mouths of Preachers and kept the Scriptures from the knowledge of the people being their spiritual food So he should neither be able to swallow nor speak from that very minute that this Judgment fell upon him and so he dyed within a few days after in great torment and extremity by a languishing silence and famishment A later Example we have in the admirable punishment of James Beton Arch-Bishop of S. Andrews in Scotland who was also a member of the purpurated Conclave at Rome He had for diverse years been an inveterate Enemy to the Gospel and the Professors of it in that Kingdom under King James the Fifth And after his Death taking the advantage of the infancy of the Princess Mary the Hereditary Queen of that Realm he thought it a work worthy of himself to double die his Purple Robes in the Blood of the Saints And to make a full and clear way for that his sanguinary Project he forged a Will of the deceased King whereby he was established the chief Regent there during the young Ladies incapacity to Reign From which yet his false play being discovered he was removed and for a while imprisoned Yet was he no sooner delivered but he presently endeavoured to raise a new and a fatal war between England and Scotland and to root out the Professors of the Truth by a violent and bloody Persecution And among others whom he cited imprisoned or exiled in the year 1545. he seized upon Mr. George Wiseheart a very eloquent and learned Preacher who by the Latin writers of that age is called Sophocardius and contrary to their own Popish Canons adjudged him to present death himself which is never done except by the hellish Inquisition of Spain but by delivering the Martyrs into the power of the Civil-Magistrate And in his Court before the Castle of S. Andrews caused that bloody Sentence to be executed the said Mr. Wiseheart being first strangled and his Body afterwards burnt to Ashes The Cardinal in the mean time had a Chamber prepared for him with Carpets and Cushions in the Windows out of which he was a Triumphant Spectator of this godly mans Martyrdom From which window he departed not more delighted than as himself thought secured and presently he began to fortify his Castle against all Assaults But Gods Judgment from Eternity awarded against him for this later as well as former cruelties exercised upon his faithful Servants slep'd not For within a few weeks after the Cardinal having falsified his Promise to the Lord Norman Lesly Son of the Earl of Rothsay a zealous Romanist He upon the thirteenth day of May the same year with about fourteen resolute Gentlemen in his company entred the said Castle of S. Andrews where the Cardinal lay having had a whore with him all that night and having first assured himself of all within and the Gates without he slew the bloody Prelate by his Bed-side without Law or Justice who had but a little before most unjustly condemned and murthered the aforesaid Mr. Wiseheart and being willing to expose the dead Carcass of that cruel Persecutor all weltring and besmeared with blood unto the view of the People who abhorred his Butcheries and rejoiced at his fall casually they laid it along to be seen of all men in that very window out of which a little before leaning at his ease upon rich Cushions he had proudly beheld the death of that precious Martyr 161. It s very observable which Historians take notice of that generally the greatest Persecutors are most drenched in the sin of uncleanness and Epicurism What was Escovedo that great Instrument of the King of Spain's cruelties against the Evangelical Party in the Low-Countries but a a very Lump of Lust which in the end proved fatal to him 162. Peter Espinac A Bishop of Lions in France was a great Persecutor and one that lived in incest with his own Sister 163. John Arch-Bishop of S. Andrews in Scotland spent the greatest part of the Revenues of his See and the seisure of the Protestants Estates whose mortal Enemy he was upon his Whores and Revellings 164. The Cardinal of Granvels Veneries were so manifest and numerous as when Anno Christi 1574. the Kingdom of Tunis and the strong Fort of Gulette formerly esteemed impregnable were won by the Turks the Spaniards made a jest of it said openly That the Cardinals Breeches had occasioned that loss meaning thereby that King Philip the Second relying chiefly upon his advice in that and in most of the rest of his important affairs the Cardinals Lusts so took him up that he had not leisure to advise the King for the best 165. Cardinal Beton aforementioned wallowed at home with pollution among his Harlots and raged abroad with the blood and slaughter of the innocent Servants of Christ. 166. In that Hellish Massacre on S. Bartholomew's Day in Paris it self The Murtherers there were for the most part brutish and lustful Soldiers or profane Varlets of the scum of the City and though their Leaders were more noble yet less virtuous The Duke of Guise and Aumale Albert Gondy Earl of Rets Tavanne and others of them that were bred up in Lust Revellings and all manner of Debaucheries 167. The next place that came nearest to the cruelties exercised at Paris was the
Emperor and all the people being extremely frighted sent one Post after another to fetch him back again 60. Theodoricus an Arian King of the Goths persecuted the sound Christians with all rigor and hostility among whom he slew two noble Senators Symmachus and Boetius But not long after the Lord stroke him with madness And as he was sitting at his Table he had the head of a great Fish set before him which he imagined to be the head of Symachus whom he had slain and thereupon he fell into such fear and astonishment that he soon after dyed Evagri 61. Ehe Arian Vandals in Africk were cruel Persecutors of the Orthodox whereupon Justinian the Emperor sent against them his brave General Belizarius who overthrew them in several Battels took Gilimer their King prisoner and wholly subverted the Empire of the Vandals in Africk after they had reigned there by the space of ninety years wherein for the most part they had been merciless Persecutors of the true Christians Gods Judgements upon Popish Persecutors 62. About the year 1488 some Popish Bishops in Bohemia stirred up the Queen who was then great with child to move the King Uladislaus severely to punish the Piccards as the godly Christians were then called and the Queen much pleased her self in thinking what grateful Spectacles she should have when she should see some of them burnt others beheaded and others drowned in the River But it pleased God that before she could see it effected she fell in travel and could by no means be delivered of her burden whereupon the Physicians advised that the child should be cut out of her womb which being done accordingly the child lived but the mother dyed 63. Two years after the Bishops by their importunity prevailed with the King to use sharp remedies against those growing evils as they called them whereupon an Edict was drawn up that all the Piccards in the Kingdom without distinction of Age Sex or Quality should be slain This was brought to the Assembly of States then met at Prague to be confirmed by them Many of the Nobles opposed it but by the subtilty of the Chancellor and his Associats it was at last agreed upon by the major part and the Chancellour as he returned homeward from the Parliament visited a Nobleman of his acquaintance and told him with much joy what they had resolved upon The Nobleman had a Servant standing by who was a great favourer of the Brethren he asked him how he liked this Decree The Servant answered that sure all parties were not agreed The Chancellour suspecting some secret Treachery asked him who durst oppose the States of the Kingdom The Servant answered There is one in Heaven who if he were not present at your Counsels you have consulted but in vain The Chancellour replyed thou Knave thou shalt find that as well as the rest And so rising up in a fury immediately a Carbuncle arose upon his Foot which turned to a disease called Ignis Sacer whereby he dyed in much misery 64. Another who was a great stickler in promoting this Decree in his return home-wards as he was alighting out of his Chariot to make water struck his Member on a sharp Nail that was in the Boot whereby as he went forward he drew out his Entrails and not long after gave up the Ghost Also one Dr. Austin who by slanderous Libels had stirred up the King to this Persecution dyed suddenly as he sate at Supper 65. Another Noble-man who promoted the aforesaid Decree as he was a hunting his Horse threw him and his own Arrow ran into his Thigh and came out at his Loins whereby he dyed a very painful death And many others of them met with the like Judgments from God whereupon it grew into a Proverb If you be a weary of your Life attempt something aganst the Piccards and you shall not escape a year to an end 66. The year after two German Tradesmen were apprehended at Prague and by the Monks there were accused of Lutheranism for which they were condemned and burnt But one of their chief Persecutors who wished that all the Piccards were hanged burned or beheaded by his hands ' it pleased God that all these evils befell himself For being exceedingly in debt for very vexation he hanged himself And when his friends had buried him privately the common people hearing of it dig'd up his carcass and threw it away which by the Magistrates command was ordered to be burnt But when the Wood was consumed and the Body only scorched his head was by one stricken off 67. As John Huss was going to Constance there was one Stanislaus Znoma a Bohemian who as he was travelling toward the Council to accuse him was stricken by God with a deadly Impostume whereof he dyed in his journey This Huss though he had the Emperors safe conduct was condemned and burnt there Shortly after whose Death the Bohemians rose in Arms under their undaunted General Zisca and had admirable successes against the Emperor and Popish Party For they maintained war against the Emperor Sigismund by the space of seventeen years together wherein he spent an infinite Treasure lost many brave Armies and gallant men And during these wars a thousand Monasteries were overthrown and destroyed many stately Castles demolished and Cities plundered and burnt which was Gods just revenging hand upon him for his perfidiousness 68. In the late Bohemian Persecution one Dr. Knapper a great Persecutor of the godly Protestants was slain by conspiracy of his own wife who was an Adulteress for which she was hanged 69. Another of those Persecutors vomited out his ungodly Soul together with his Blood 70. Another ran mad and threw himself down from his own house and so roaring fearfully breathed his last 71. Another shot himself dead with his own Pistol 72. Another ran mad and withal fell into so loathsome a disease that none could endure his stink and at last he was choaked in vomiting up of abundance of Blood 73. Another was seized with a strange Disease wherein his Body turned as black as a coal and he uttered his speech like the barking of a Dog and within the space of three Days dyed in terrible pains 74. Another by the breaking of a great Gun was torn all to pieces 75. Another was taken with a terrible Disease in the Throat so that his Tongue rotted in his Mouth and many holes were eaten in his Throat by which both Food and Physick came forth so that he dyed in much misery 76. Ladislaus King of Bohemia together with diverse other Popish Princes had conspired together utterly to root out the Protestants in that Kingdom which should have been put in execution at the time of the Kings marriage But a little before in the middle of his great preparations he fell sick and within the space of six and thirty hours he dyed of a pestilent sore in his Groin 77. In France Minerius Governour of Provence was sent with an Army
Oath that he would never hear nor see any more of those Lutherans burned 139. In the late Rebellion and Persecution of Ireland John Nicholson and Anne his wife were received into the Protection of one Fitz-Patrick who would have perswaded them to change their Religion and to go to Mass But they professed that before they would do that they would dye upon the Swords point Then he laboured to prevail with the woman to burn her Bible but she said that before she would do it she would dye the death whereupon the Sabbath morning following they were both of them cruelly murthered But he that acted that villany was so tormented in Conscience and dogged with their Apparitions that he pined away and dyed 140. In the late Irish Massacre wherein the bloody Papists spared none of what Age Sex or quality soever O! how visibly did the Judgments of God follow them And for that savage Blood-shed gave them Blood to drink in great measure For Mac-Guir Mac-Mahun and Sir Philem Oneal being taken Prisoners were publickly executed Most of the rest were consumed by the Sword either in their own Countrey or in Foreign parts and their spirits were generally so debased and their courage emasculated that a few English or Scottish Soldiers would chase multitudes of them and Gods Judgments did so eminently follow them that within a few years most of that cruel Generation were rooted out Of Gods Judgments upon Persecutors in Germany Spain and France 141. The Electoral House of Saxony upon the devesting of that brave and pious Prince John Frederick the true Heir by the Emperor Charles the Fifth and the investing the younger House to usurp that Honour hath ever since proved a greater Friend to the Popish Party than to the purer Church of the French and Helvetick Confession Maurice that usurped the Dutchy and Electorate upon the captivating of the said John Frederick his Cousin first ruined the Princes of the Smalcaldick Union to which himself had subscribed and then casting an ambitious eye upon the Empire it self broke his Faith with the Emperor that had raised him and having patched up the defection by the help of Ferdinand of Austria King of Bohemia afterwards Emperor he lastly perished by a violent death in a pitch'd Battel fought against his Fellow-Protestants A just Judgment of God upon him 142. Charles the Fifth having obtained the Empire by the help and monies of our King Henry the Eighth was the most potent Emperor that ever Germany had as long as he maintained the peace of Religion But having yielded to the Popes instigations and prospered a while in his intended extirpation of the Truth he found at last by sad experience what his brave and valiant General Castaldus had foretold him that these violent proceedings would in the end prove fatal to himself For having first fled away at Midnight in a cold and rainy season from Onspurch for fear of the Protestant Army he was afterward instead of setling his Son Philip in his Imperial Throne as he had intended forced to surrender the Empire to his Brother Ferdinand who diverse years before had entred into a secret League with the Protestant Princes of Germany and so having lived a few years in a despised and disconsolate condition he at last ended his life most ingloriously in a Monastery 143. His Son Philip the Second King of Spain the most inveterate Enemy of the Gospel that ever lived did not only erect Shambles for Gods Saints in most of his large Dominions by his bloody Inquisitors but still aided the Rebels in France England and Ireland against their lawful Sovereigns and plotted to invade all other Protestant Dominions in Christendom so at last by one general Carriage of them all he and his holy Father the Pope might have shared the Christian World by a double Monarchy of the Church and Empire between them But did this bloody Prince prosper in these his ambitious and cruel Designs Nothing less For what got he by his invading France by Land and England and Ireland by Sea and by his large Pensions conferred upon the Traitors and secret Enemies of either States Truly nothing For having wasted about thirty millions of Money upon those fruitless Designs and not gained a Foot of Land in any of those Realms but the loss of a great part of the seventeen Provinces with whom having broken his Oath solemnly sworn to them in his Inauguration they by the Aid of England and France freed themselves from his unjust Oppression and Tyranny Neither did the Divine Justice suffer him so to escape but raised a Fire in his own House For whereas he had Issue by his first Wife Mary the Daughter of John the Third King of Portugal one only Son called Charles a Prince of admirable towardliness He during the Life of our Queen Mary his second Wife treated a Marriage for his Son with Elizabeth the eldest Daughter of Henry the Second King of France during which Treaty our Queen Mary dying he himself married her who was designed for his Son a Lady of admirable Beauty and Parts They often in private never forgetting their old affections lamented their unhappy loss each of other The Son also detested his Fathers cruelty and butchery by the merciless Inquisitors This so enraged his jealous Father that he imprison'd him and delivered him over into the Inquisitors Hands by whom he was condemned Anno Christi 1568. and a few days after he sent to him to choose his own Death who in a warm Bath caused his Veins to be opened and so dyed A while after though she was great with child he caused his Queen to drink a Cup of poison which soon dispatched her 144. King Philip's fourth Wife was Anne the Daughter of Mary the Empress his own natural Sister by whom he had Issue Ferdinand and James both cut off by Death in their Infancy and Philip who being the only surviving Issue of this incestuous match succeeded his Father in his Dominions but not altogether in his cruelties 145. Rodulph the Second Emperor of Germany not following the steps of the wise Maximilian his Father but of the aforesaid Philip his Brother in Law sought by all secret and hostile means to enervate and root out Religion in the Empire What got he by it but to have Gods curse denounced in Scripture fulfilled upon him That the elder should serve the younger For Mathias the Arch-Duke of Austria raising an Army in the year 1608. and joining his Forces with those of the oppressed Protestant in Bohemia hem'd up his Brother Rodulph in Prague got the Kingdom of Hungary from him in present possession and the Empire in reversion leaving him nothing but the complement of Majesty which he did not long survive and could never revenge that affront 146. We need not look into ancient Histories of Gods Judgments upon Heathen persecuting Emperors we may see the sad successes of the Princes of the house of Valois in France King Henry the
Charles Lorainer Duke of Main was escaped being the younger Brother to the murthered Duke of Guise she presaged to the King her Son the sad Issue of that rash attempt which he as it seems interpreting to be rather the expression of her wishes than her fears and having by many woful experiences seen the effects of her revengful Italian Spirit took a course to pacify her wrath For not long after she there ended her unhappy Life by poison saith Elias Reusner in the same Castle also where she held the first secret and bloody Council for the execution of the aforesaid bloody Massacre Francis her youngest Son dyed before her June the tenth Anno 1584. in the one and thirtieth year of his Age of a violent poison probably ministred to him by some of the Hispaniolized Guisards so that it caused very much Blood to issue out of his Body in several places the sight of which purple streams might well call upon him to remember with what inhumane Pride he trampled upon the bloody streets of Paris in the great slaughter committed upon Gods Saints and Martyrs about twelve years before 154. There now only remained Henry the Third the French King alive of all the first contrivers and principal Executioners of that inhumane Massacre which no Age no Time no Action of the most Barbarous Nations of the world could ever parallel till that horrid Massacre of the bloody Irish upon the English Protestants in the year 1641. October 23. wherin above one hundred and fifty thousand perished in one of the four Provinces of that Kingdom after the most savage and barbarous manner that ever was read of 155. Charles Lorainer Duke of Main was presently upon the death of his Brother made General of the Holy League as they stiled it And Paris it self and in a manner all the Popish Cities beyond the Loiâ— giving up their Names and Forces to that Faction supported from Rome by Pope Sixtus the Fifth and from Spain by Philip the Second 156. When the King saw that neither his acting the Monk with the Flagellators nor his playing the Devil against the Prostants could secure him from a speedy ruine by the violent hands of Rebels He sent to the victorious King of Navar his Brother in Law and to the Protestant Army before whose known valour the Popish Forces hastened back from the Loyer to the Seine Henry the Third pursued them and pitched his Royal Pavilion at S. Clou not far from the Gates of Paris But his former cruelties and persecutions of the godly were doubtless the hinderances of his new expected Victories and the Divine Providence so ordered it that in the very place where the last resolution was taken by himself his Mother his Brethren and others for the speedy Execution of that brutish Massacre about seventeen years before nay in the very same House of Jerom de Gondy and in the very same Room and Chamber saith John de Serres was murthered by James Clement a Jesuited Monk Anno Christi 1589. and in the nine and thirtieth year of his Age. This Assasination was promoted by Pope Sixtus the Fifth by the seditious Sermons of Jesuits Priests and Friars and by the persecution of Katherine Mary Duchess of Mompensier Sister of the slain Duke of Guise who was so horribly transported with malice against the Protestants and with desire of revenge upon the King as she prostitued her Body to that Jesuited Goat to encourage him the more to that horrid murther and by that means to stupify and harden his Soul by his filthy Lust that it might not startle at any other wickedness whatsoever Yet as this King some Months before his Death had altered his former bloody resolution against the Protestants so did the Divine Providence at his Death afford him some hours of Repentance after the bloody knife had been sheathed in his Belly in which time he acknowledged his sin and his error in having been so long miss-lead by his ambitious and malicious Counsellors and his sin in having persecuted his Protestant Subjects and for having enforced the Conscience of many to submit to Popery against the known Truth by threats and cruelty 157. Our Queen Mary began her Reign with the breach of her Publick Faith For whereas the Crown was set upon her head by the Gentry and Commons of Suffolk although they knew her to be a Papist which shews that the godly Protestants whatsoever is suggested to the contrary by Lustful Prophane and Popishly affected Persons are the best Subjects that any Sovereign can be happy in yet she in one of her first Acts of Council took order for their restraint long before the Mass and Latine Service were generally received in London and caused that Diocess to tast the sharpest Inquisition and Persecution that raged during her Reign which was happily shortened by her Husbands contemning her Person and her Enemies conquering her Dominions neither of which she had power either to recover or revenge So that though she dyed not by any outward violence yet was her end as inglorious and miserable as her Reign had been turbulent and bloody She might have taken warning by the sudden and immature Death of King James the Fifth of Scotland her Cousin German who raising a persecution there against his Loyal and innocent Subjects that were Protestants Anno Christi 1539. burning some exiling and imprisoning others and forcing many to blaspheme in abjuring the known truth and all by advice and procurement of James Beaton Arch-Bishop of S. Andrews and David Beaton Abbot of Arbroth his Brother never saw good day after For two brave young Princes his Sons were the year following cut off by untimely ends in their Cradles Wars to his great disadvantage and loss were raised between him and our King Henry the Eighth his Uncle and all things fell out so cross to his haughty and vast mind as that it hastened his Death which fell out Anno Christi 1542. See more of him before Many also are the Examples of Gods severe but righteous Judgments of God upon Popish persecuting Prelates whereof you have store of instances in my two Martyrologies and in my two Vollumes of Examples I shall content my self for the present with two or three which though briefly set down there yet here more largely 158. Thomas Arundal Arch-Bishop of Canterbury having been the successful Traytor by the help of his Reverend Follow-Bishops to estabish Henry the Fourth in the Throne of King Richard the Second his Liege Lord and Cousin German pressed the new King whose broken Title needed the supportments of his Prelates to use his temporal Sword for the destruction of the Disciples of John Wickliff whose numbers at that time were so encreased that they even filled the Kingdom The King assented and having by their cruel instigation shed the blood of many of Gods Saints his Reign proved neither long nor prosperous 159. King Henry the Fifth his Son a brave and marshal Prince succeeding him