THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE REIGNS OF K. CHARLES II. AND K. IAMES II. Printed in the Year 1690. PREFACE IT is one of the Encomiums given to Suetonius That he made Publick to the World the Vices and Miscarriages of the Twelve Caesars with the same freedom with which they were by them Committed And there is no question but one of his chiefest reasons for so doing was this Because he would not deceive Posterity and all agree that he was Contemporary with the Three last So that the Enormities of Domitian could not but be fresh in his Memory when he wrote his Life and there might be several Persons Living as might have the same Partial Affections for Domitian as there are now Adorers of C. II. and J. II. For which reason there is a wary Caution among some People That Truth is not always to be spoken Which perhaps may be sometimes True but as the Case stands with these Sheets not at all to be taken notice of The pains of this short History being as well to Vindicate as to Inform and written in Opposition to one of the French King 's most Scandalous Libels and bitter Invectives against our Present Sovereign Intitled The True Portraicture of William Henry of Nassau c. Now to have made a Particular Answer to all the Extravagancies and Impertinent Flams of a Malicious Libeller would have been a Fending and Proving altogether fruitless It was therefore thought the more concise way to bring the Two Last Reigns upon the Stage and then let all the World judg of the Furberies and Tyranny of those Times and the Integrity Sincerity and Sweetness of Their Present Majesties Reign As for the Truth of what is here contain'd I will not Apologize for it for as to the more secret Transactions the Consequences and Events are my Testimonies and for what was more publickly carried there are the loud and general Complaints of the Kingdom to confirm it So that I shall say no more THE SECRET HISTORY c. WHEN Charles the Second was restored to the Thrones of England Scotland and Ireland never any Monarch in the World came to the Possession of so large a Dominion with more Advantages to have done good for himself to his Subjects at home and to his Allies abroad The People all experienc'd in Martial Discipline as having but newly sheath'd the Sword of Civil War and Foreign Conquest so that their Valour was dreaded abroad where-ever he should have menac'd an Enlargement of his Territories Besides all this he had the Love of his Subjects equal if not superior to any Prince that ever reign'd before him and he had the Affection of â—is Parliament to the highest degree But after all this he was no sooner setâ—ed in his Throne but through the Influâ—nce of Evil Consellors upon a dispositiâ—n naturally vicions and easily corrupted with Effeminate Pleasures he abandon'd himself to all manner of Softness and Voluptuous Enjoyments and harbouring in his Bosom the worst of Vices base Ingratitude betray'd himself that he might betray his People For where the Constitution of a Nation is such that the Laws of the Land are the Measures both of the Sovereigns Commands and the Obedience of the Subjects whereby it is provided that as the one are not to invade what by Concessions and Stipulations is granted to the Ruler so the other is not to deprive them of their lawful and determin'd Rights and Liberties there the Prince who strives to subvert the Fundamental Laws of the Society is the Traytor and the Rebel and not the People who endeavour to preserve and defend their own Nor must we ascribe the Miscarriages of his Reign altogether to the remissness of his Nature but to a Principle of Revenge which his Mother had infus'd into him not so much for the loss of her Husband but out of her inbred Malice to the Protestant Religion which no where flourish'd in that Splendour as in England foster'd anâ— cherished by the vow'd Enemy of this Nation his Brother the D. of York who haâ— been openly heard to declare in his Bed chamber at St. Iames's That he was resolv'd to be reveng'd upon the English Nation for the Death of his Father And what an Ascendant this Brother had over him the whole Kingdom has felt by sad and woful experience For indeed the King had all along an Affection for him so entire and baneful to the Nation that he could only be said to Reign while his Brother Rul'd With all these Royal Vertues and imbred and fomented Animosities to render him at his return a Gracious Sovereign to this Kingdom let us trace him from his Cradle to find out those Princely Endowments which invisibly encreasing with him as he grew in Years dazled in such a manner the Eyes of the doating Politicians of that Age to recal him against that known and vulgar Maxim of Common Prudence Regnabit sanguine multo Ad Regnum quisquis venit ab exilio When he was but very young he had a very strange an unaccountable Fondness to a wooden Billet without which in his Arms he would never go abroad nor lie down in his Bed From which the more observing sort of People gathered that when he came to Years of Maturity either Oppressors and Blockheads would be his greatest Favourites or else that when he came to reign he would either be like Iupiter's Log for every Body to deride and contemn or that he would rather chuse to command his People with a Club than rule them with a Scepter And indeed they that made the first and last Conjectures found in due time they were not altogether in the wrong For the Throne was no sooner empty by the death of his Father before he could be permitted to seat himself in it but he gave us a plain discovery what sort of People they were who when he came to Reign were most likely to have the Principal Room in his Favour and Trust and by whose assistance he was in hopes to tyrannize over his English and Scottish Subjects For when the Parliament of Scotland sent to him as he was then cruizing about Guernsey to treat with him about receiving him to be their King he would not so much as transact with them till he had first sent to Ireland to assure himself whether those Rebels who had murder'd no less than two hundred thousand Protestants were in a condition or no for him to cast himself upon their Assistance But those hopes failing in regard they were in a fair way to be subdu'd themselves he was at length inclin'd to entertain the Overture made him by the Scots And yet even then was his mind so full fraught with the thoughts of Despotical Dominion and purposes of introducing Popery into his Territories that had it not been for the P. of Orange he would never have comply'd with the Terms which the Scots had order to propose tho' no other than what were necessary for the security of the
the Scandal of being a Whore that after he had made her a Dutchess he made her also his Wife that is to say he marry'd her by vertue of his Royal Prerogative at the Lord A's House by the Common Prayer-Book according to the Ceremonies of the Church of England A thing in some measure justifiable in a Prince since the Law allows all Men one Wife and therefore a King who is above Law may surely have two And upon this ground perhaps it was that upon a Lord Mayor's Day being at Mr. Eaton's in Cheapside where the King usually stood upon some Discourse that brought it out she cry'd Me no Whore if me thought me were a Whore me would cut mine own Throat And by the same Dispensing Power he provided also for her Children And therefore having no less adulterously begotten a Daughter upon the Lady Wood he join'd her in holy Wedlock to one of his Sons whom he had begot after the same Legitimate manner upon the Body of the Dutchess of Cleveland according to the Answer of Tamar to Ammon of which he wanted not Sycophant Priests enow to put him in mind But these were Peccadillo's readily forgiven by the Religion which he inwardly embrac'd which could readily dispense with such Trifles as these provided he went thorough-stitch with the Work which his Ghostly Fathers had cut out for him Which was the reason perhaps that he made choice of a Devotion so conformable to his lustful Inclinations For certainly what was said of Harry the Eighth might much more properly he said of him That he spar'd no Woman whether Virgin Marry'd or Widow in his Venereal Heats Which fill'd his Court so full of Pimps and Panders that there was hardly any Preferment about his Person for any other This was that which render'd the D. of L. one of the most ill-favour'd of Men so amiable in our Caesar's Eyes And this was that which advanced several others to their gilded Coaches and Places of the greatest Honour and Profit about the Court. Tho nothing was more mournful then to see those vast Sums of Money which the Parliament so profusely gave him for the Honour and Security of the Nation so extravagantly and prodigally wasted upon his Strumpets of which two were Common Harlots of Actresses taken from the Bawdy Stage to his Royal Bed A thousand Pounds every Munday-morning for the Smiles of a Gilt when his necessary Servants pin'd and starv'd for want of their weekly Board-wages and the strength of the Kingdom his Seamen were forc'd to serve his Enemies for Bread Thus from the first hour of his Arrival into these Kingdoms for I dare not call them His he set himself by his own perswasion and influence to withdraw both Men and Women from the Laws of Nature and Morality and to pollute and infect the People with all manner of Debauchery and Wickedness He that ought to have shone like the North Star in the Firmament of Royalty to direct his Subjects in the Paths of Vertue and Honesty was the Sovereign Ignis fatuus to misguide them into all the snares of Ruin and Perdition Execrable Oaths were the Chief Court-Acknowledgements of a Deity Fornications and Adulteries the Principal Tests of the Peoples Loyalty and Obedience And whether it were to affront God who had preserved and restored him to his Throne or to be reveng'd upon the Nation for inviting him so unanimously to weild the Scepter of his Ancestors certain it is that he made it his business to live in defiance of the Fear and Authority of God and to poyson and corrupt the Minds and deprave the Manners of the English People as might easily be observed through the whole Course of his Reign But the King had been well instructed in his Exile and had sufficiently learnt in his banishment that undoubted Maxim of Tyranny that the only way to alter the settl'd Government of a Nation and to introduce Slavery and Popery the support of Thraldom was to weaken and make soft the Military Temper of the People by Debauchery and Effeminacy which generally go hand in hand together Knowing therefore that Regis ad Exemplum totus componitur Orbis he gave these lewd Examples himself on purpose that after he had thus Enervated the Minds and Resolutions of his Subjects he might the more easily trample upon their Necks and reduce them under the perpetual Yoke of Antichrist in expectation of his Mothers Blessing and to fulfil the Agreement between himself the Pope and the French King Certain it is that the Kingdom was never in a better Posture for the King to work upon it then at the time of his return into England For such were the Contests for Superiority among those who had taken upon them the Government after the death of Oliver such the Confusions and Disorders that from thence arose that no body could probably see where would be the End of the general Distraction unless it were by reducing all things to their Primitive Condition under a Prince whose Title was so fair to the Crown Though a great Blunder in Politicks which the necessity of Affairs at that time made to pass for an Act of Prudence But such an Act it was to which all Parties were the more inflam'd by the Kings reiterated Oaths Promises and Declarations to those of the Church of England to maintain the Protestant Religion to the Dissenters that he would indulge their tender Consciences with all the Liberty they could rationally desire and to All in general that he was a most really zealous and unalterable Protestant And so infatuated they were with these ingratiating Wheedles that should all that knew him beyond Sea both at Colen and in Flanders have spoken their discoveries with the Voices of Angels nay should the Letter which he wrote with his own hand in the year Sixty two to the Pope have been shewn them in Capital Letters they would have been all lookt upon but as Fictions and Inventions to obstruct the Happiness of the Nation The People therefore ador'd him as the end of all their Miseries the Dissenters upon the Relations of their Ministers return'd thought themselves happy in the reports of his Mercy and Piety and the Parliament doated upon his Oaths and Promises so that no Prince in the World could ascend a Throne with more Love and Affection or with a greater Reputation in the Opinion of the whole Nation What could be more inhuman more immoral more barbarous then by all the Violations of Royal Faith and the Word of a King to disappoint the Hopes and Expectations of a People that had such a Confidence of his Religion and Vertue Though perhaps such a failure might have been attributed to his Weakness and want of Conduct But to set himself after so high a Veneration of his Vertues such a prostrating of their Lives and Fortunes at his Feet in Combination with a Forreign Prince the only professed and mortal Enemy of their Welfare to destroy their Religion
Nation that had so little respect for Kings and that the occasion was never more favourable seeing many of the Princes of Germany were already entered into the League and that the King of France was powerful enough to be able to promise to his Allies in the Issue of that War satisfaction both as to their Honour and Interests whereby he prevailed with that Prince to enter into secret Alliance with France And for his greater Assurance and the more to confirm him Henrietta Dutchess of Orleans went for England and proposed to her Brother in the Name of the Most Christian King that he would assure him an Absolute Authority over his Parliament and full Power to establish the Catholick Religion in his Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland But withal she told him that to compass this before all things else it would be necessary to abate the Pride and Power of the Dutch and to reduce them to the sole Province of Holland and that by this means the King of England should have Zealand for a Retreat in case of necessity and that the rest of the Low-Countries should remain to the King of France if he could render himself Master of it This is the Sum of that famous League concluded at Dover fram'd and enter'd into on purpose for the Subjugation of these three Nations to Popery and Slavery However as at first this Treaty was kept so close that it was no way to be discover'd so before the Effects appear'd it was necessary that the Parliament after the old wont should be gull'd to the giving of Money for the carrying on this grand and deep Conspiracy The Parliament met Octob. 24. 1670. where the Lord Keeper Bridgeman guided more by his Instructions than by any knowledge he had of the devilish Design omitted nothing to make Both Houses sensible of the great Service done to England and in a manner to all Mankind by chaining up the devouring Lyon that was never satiated with Prey and the more to incite their Liberality he told them of several other Leagues which the King for the good of his People and the Advancement of the Trade of the Nation had made with other Princes as the D. of Savoy the King of Denmark and the King of Spain by which as his Lordship was pleased to say it was evident that all the Princes of Europe sought his Majesties Friendship as acknowledging they could not secure much less improve their present Condition without it concluding that for the Support of these Alliances the annual Charge of His Majesties Navy came to no less than Five hundred thousand Pounds nor could be maintain'd with less Upon the telling of which Story notwithstanding the immense Sums lavish'd to no purpose or rather to our Loss in the former War with Holland notwithstanding they had given the Additional Duty upon Wines for Eight years amounting to Five hundred and sixty thousand Pounds and confirmed the Sale of the Fee farm Rents no less their Gift being a part of the Publick Revenue to the value of one Million and Eight hundred thousand Pounds they could not hold but gave with both hands again a Subsidy of Twelve Pence in the Pound to the real value of all Lands and other Estates proportionably with several more beneficial Clauses in the Bargain to which they joyned the Additional Excise upon Beer Ale c. And lastly the Law Bill which being summ'd up together could not be estimated at less than two Millions and half So that for the Tripple League here was a Tripple Supply and the Subject had now all the reason to believe that this Alliance which had been fix'd at first by the Publick Interest Safety and Honour was by these three Grants as with three Golden Nails sufficiently clinched and rivetted But now therefore was the most proper Time and Occasion for the King and his chosen Ministers to give Demonstrations of their Fidelity to the French Monarch and for his Sacred Majesty by the Forfeiture of all these Obligations to his Subjects and the Princes abroad and at the Expence of all this Treasure given for quite contrary Uses to recommend himself the more meritoriously to his Patronage The Parliament therefore after they had given all this Money were presently Prorogued and sat no more till the latter end of February 1672. that there might be a competent time allowed for so great a work as was designed and that the Architects of our Ruine might be so long free from the busie and odious Inspection of the Parliament till the work were finish'd And now all Applications made by his Majesty of Great Britain to induce Foreign Princes into the Garranty of the Peace of Aix la Chapelle ceased while on the other side those who desired to be admitted into it were here rejected The Duke of Lorrain who had always been a true Friend to the King and for his Affection to the Tripple League had incurred the French King's Displeasure with the loss of his Country Seizd upon in the year 1669. against all the Laws not only of Peace but Hostility yet by vertue of the Dover Treaty was refused the favour to which others had been so earnestly invited and though his Envoy was sent back with Complements and many Expressions of Kindness yet he was told withal that the French Invasion was a torrent not to be stopp'd at that time which was as much as to say the Case was alter'd and the Tripple League must signifie nothing At the same time also the Emperour by a Letter invited himself into the same Garranty in conformity to one of the Articles of the said Treaty of Aix Upon receipt of which Letter the King assured the Spanish Embassador that he was glad his Imperial Majesty was so ready to come into the League and told him he would cause an Instrument to be prepared in order to his Admission But when the Resolution was taken and orders given for preparing the said Instrument it was moved that Mr. Secretary Trevor who was not initiated in their holy Mysteries might not have the drawing of it though it was his proper Province By which means the Popish Cabal having made themselves sole Masters of the thing at first a reasonable honest Draught was brought in but before it was perfected Monsieur Colbert being consulted the King was possessed with an opinion that the admitting the Emperor would be attended with dangerous Consequences and that in case he came into the League his Majesty would be engaged in all his Quarrels and bound to make his Forces March into the farthest parts of Germany as often as it should happen to be Invaded by the Great Turk which Secretary Trevor oppos'd as much as he was able and endeavoured to satisfie the King that the Garranty of the Tripple League as well as of the Treaty of Aix related only to Hostilities either from France or Spain yet the wary Men of the Cabal being on the King's side carry'd it and so the
further supply of French Money And certain it is that though the English Parliament was kept a loof from the Business of War Peace and Alliance as improper for their meddling withal yet with those three Estates of France all things were negotiated and transacted with the greatest confidence imaginable To which purpose they were Adjourn'd from New-Market to London and there continued till the return of the English Parliament but then dismissd home though with all the Signs and Demonstrations of mutual Affection imaginable And indeed the effect of their Negotiation soon after appeared for the Parliament still insisting that the King's Subjects might be recalled out of the French King's Service pressing the King to enter into a League Offensive and Defensive with the States-General and taking up a Resolution that they would proceed upon nothing till satisfied in the Business of the French Affairs and Popery they were put off by Adjournments from time to time or as it may be more truly said kick'd from Adjournment to Adjournment as from one Stair down to another to the end the French King might have the more leisure to compleat his Conquests in Flanders And from this last usage of his Parliament we may justly take occasion to recollect his Behaviour all along to the Grand Council of the Nation of which in his glavering Letters before his Restoration he had so high an Esteem and thought them so necessary for the Government of the Kingdom that neither Prince nor People could be in any tolerable degree happy without them yet to which his Malice was so inveterate after once he came to be safe in his Throne that no Man could use them with more Scorn and Contempt His first Parliament began at Westminster the Eighth of May 1667. a Parliament so kind to him and so confident of the Sincerity and Integrity of his Words that they gave him back the Triennial Bill and laid themselves at his Mercy to do with them what he pleased whereas before they had power to Assemble every three years by an Enacted Law And no less frankly they surrender'd the power of the Militia into his Hands of both which Acts being done in haste they had leisure enough afterwards to repent But notwithstanding all the great Kindness of this Parliament and their more than extraordinary Liberality to the King of several Millions of the Peoples Money which was with the same profusion wasted upon his Pleasures and the carrying on his Designs for the Introducing of Popery and French Government not a Penny hardly for the good of the Nation while the Seamen were fed with a Bit and a Knock and the Merchants that supplied the Stores of the Nay were cheated of their Money and never paid to this day with what Scorn and Contempt he used them and how far from that Esteem and Veneration he professed to have for them while he was wheedling for his Restoration is apparent to all the Kingdom 'T is true the King continued them till all men of Impartial Knowledge and Judgment thought them Dissolved by Law and till at length they were Dissolved by himself the Twenty fifth of Ianuary 1678. Not that they Sate so long but were discontinued and contemptuously spurn'd from Meeting to Meeting many times by the intimated Orders and to promote the Designs of the French King and never suffered to Sit but when the King was in extream necessity of Money Among the rest of these Prologations there was one at a time when the greatest urgency of Affairs the greatest danger that ever threatned the Welfare of this Nation required their Sitting when they were diving into the bottom of the Popish Plot and endeavouring to bring to condign Punishment the chief Instruments which the King had made use of to compass his Arbitrary and Popish Design But then it was that the King to screen his wicked Ministers from Publick Justice preferr'd the Caresses of the expanded nakedness of a French Harlot before the preservation of three Nations For then it was as Mr. Andrew Marvel with a Satyrical Indignation expresses it That Carwel that Incestuous Punk Made our most Sacred Sovereign drunk And drunk she let him give the Buss Which still the Kingdom 's bound to Curse This was the Effect of that nights bloudy debauch which continued till the morning and all the morning till the Parliament was Dissolv'd or Orders at least given for the doing it For the Duke of York and the rest of the Conspirators being very uneasie under the terrible Inspections which the two Houses made into the Secrets of this Popish Plot but lately discover'd would not endure their Sitting any longer On the other side the King being alarm'd by the detection of so many design'd Contrivances against his Person to remove him out of the World for which the Papists had so little reason unless it were to make him more hasty than stood with the Rules and Methods of his Politicks was the more willing to let the Parliament sit for fear of exasperating the Nation at such a ticklish Conjuncture of Affairs as at that time when all the Protestants of the Kingdom were awakened by such dreadful Consternations and Jealousies What therefore could not be obtained by open Perswasion when His Majesty was sober and sensible must be wrested form him when he was intoxicated To this purpose Portsmouth was fully instructed what to do and as being privy to the whole Conspiracy against the Kingdom was entrusted to manage the Business The Night was spent in Carousing and Buffooning so that His Majesty by Morning was far from that Condition in which he used to appear at Chappel In the Morning Portsmouth retir'd with the King and two Great Ladies more into a more Private Room where to bind him the faster in her Charms and that he might have no time for second Thought the three Ladies placed themselves before his Eyes in the posture of the three Naked Goddesses in expectation of their Sentences from the Trojan Sheepherd and in that Posture going to the Sport of Questions and Commands when it came to Portsmouth's turn to Rule she asked her Monarchical Subject whether he would have Two Commands and One Question or Two Questions and One Command To which when the King replied One Command and Two Questions The Strumpet presently cried our Then I command ye to Dissolve the Parliament Ahassuerus could have said no more nor have been more absolutely obey'd for that very Morning the Parliament was Prorogu'd accordingly notwithstanding all that P. Rupert when he heard the Resolution was taken could urge with all the vehemency imaginable against it while the D. of York stuck close to his Brother and told him his Cousin rav'd So that the Duke that advised for the Ruine of the Nation was believed but the Prince who spoke his mind freely for the good of the Kingdom was dismissed for a Mad-man So well did the King act his part that when his well-meaning Counsellors lent their assisting
hands to prevent the Consequences of French and Popish Dictates they were mistaken in the Man and gave their wholsom Advice to him that was bound not to take it and was himself the Primum Mobile of all the Disorders which they besought of him to remedy During this Sessions of Parliament many foul things came to light For while the King had raised an Army and pressed the Parliament for Money to maintain them under pretence of making a War with France which was the earnest desire of all the Protestant part of the Kingdom the Parliament were fully informed that while the King boasted of the Alliances which he had made for the preservation of Flanders and the Protestant Religion both at home and abroad he was secretly entred into Treaties and Alliances at the same time with the French King and Mr. Garraway of the House of Commons had gotten a Copy of the Private Treaty between the King of England and the French King at the same instant that the Secretary and all the Court Pentioners cried out a War insomuch that such of the Conspirators as were in the House began to blush when they saw the Cheat so palpably discerned It was farther discovered that a great Favourite of the Duke 's had been sent over into France under a pretence of Expostulating and requiring satisfaction for the Injuries which the English had received from the French but in reality to carry the Project of Articles for the Peace and to settle and confirm all things fast about the Money that was to come from France and to agree the Methods for shamming the Confederates about their Expected Alliances They found themselves cheated of all the Pole Bill Money which they had given so little a while before upon the assurance of a War intended against France the greatest part of which they perceived was imediately though appropriated to the French Wur only converted to other uses as the paying of old Debts so that very little was left to pay for any Necessaries bought or to be bought toward the pretended War with France Nor were they ignorant of the real Design for which the King had raised his Army and what care the King and his Brother took that there should be no other Officers in that Army than what were fit for the Work in hand which was to introduce Popery and French Government by main force Four parts of Five being downright Papists or else such as resolved so to be upon the least intimation The Duke recommending all such as he knew fit for the Turn and no less than a Hundred Commissions being sign'd by Secretary W. to â—ish Papists to raise Forces notwithstanding the late Act by which means both the Land and Naval Forces were in safe hands And to compleat the Work hardly a Judge Justice of the Peace or any Officer in England but what was of the Duke's Promotion Nor were they ignorant of the private Negotiations carried on by the Duke with the Kings Connivance with the Pope and Cardinal Norfolk who had undertaken to raise Money from the Church sufficient to supply the King's Wants till the Work were done in case the Parliament should smoak their Design and refuse to give any more Nor was the Parliament ignorant what great Rejoycing there was in Rome it self to hear in what a posture his Majesty was and how well provided of an Army and Money to begin the Business The Parliament also understood while they were labouring the War with France and to resist the growth of Popery and Arbitrary Power that the King underhand assisted the French with Men and Ammunition of all sorts and soon after that a Cessation was concluded both at Nimeghen and Paris and that the King had got some money from France for that Jobb by which means the French King was now sure to hold all his Conquests abroad which had England been real to the Confederates might have been easily wrested again out of his Hands But it seems it was not so much Money as the King expected which made him angry so that he began to threaten that if the French King did not perform his Promise of 300000 l. Annuity for three Years he would undo all he had done against the next Parliament But the French King derided those vain Threats menacing in his turn that if the King of England would not be content with his Terms and do and say to the Parliament according to his directions he would discover both him and his Correspondents in betraying the Nation and discover all his secret Contrivances against the Kingdom as afterwards he Published the Dover Treaty at Paris which was the reason that after that His Majesty of England never durst disoblige the French Monsieur but became a perfect Slave to his Interest a Bondage he never needed to have undergone had he been but half as sincere to his English Parliament But to them he was never true with them he always broke his Faith and Royal Word insomuch that after they had given him Money to Disband his Army he employed the Money to another use and kept up his standing Forces to the great Terror of the People in all parts of the Kingdom So that now all things running on the Papistical side to their Hearts desire what with Popish Souldiers Popish Officers Popish Counsels Popish Priests and Jesuits swarming about the Town and Country and France at leisure to help them who had help'd him to be more a Conqueror by the Peace than he could have expected by a War the Duke of York was for the Kings pulling off his Vizard and for setting up Alamode of France according to what had been so often debated at White hall and St. Iames's But while the King and his Brother were thus riding Post to ruin the Laws and Religion of the Kingdom the Discovery of the Popish Plot by Dr. Oats broke all their Measures for a time by laying open the Secret Contrivances of our English Castor and Pollux for the introducing of Popery and Arbitrary Government This Plot was no sooner made known to the King but he imparts it to the Duke not the knowledge of the Plot for that they both knew before but the News of the Plots being discovered Upon which they set themselves with all the care they could to stop the farther Progress of the Discovery To which purpose the Duke gives notice of it to his Man Coleman and the Priests and Jesuits in the Savoy by which means what Papers and Persons were to be conceal'd and conveyed away was carefully looked after All this while by this â—easonable detection of the King and his Brother to the Priests Jesuits Oats himself narrowly escaped Massacred Oats finding himself thus betray'd and abandoned by the King applies himself to Sir Edmund Bury Godfry with a Scheme of the Plot fairly drawn up by that means to be introduced before the Council to have the Business there unfolded which with much ado was done and Oats
yet there was another quickly hatch'd of the same stamp and nature though carried on by other Instruments Nell Wall an Irish Papist and a Wench formerly employed only to empty Close-stools at White-Hall but afterwards for her Religion advanced to be one of the French Dutchesses Women and so to the King's Favour by which she became a great States-Woman as well as a common Whore To this Woman a great part of the Popish Secrets were discovered and by her means Fitz-Harris was first introduced to the Dutchess and then to the King where he was told That the Plot would undo them unless a way could be found to make a Counter-plot therefore he was bid to try all ways to effect it for that no Cost should be spared but such Rewards should be given as were fit for so great a Service Draw Painter here England's pious Protestant Monarch Counter-plotting with his Popish Concubine and her Close-stool Wench against his Parliament and Kingdom in favour of those that sought the destruction of both The business of this Irish Tool was to find out Seditious Lampoons and Pamphlets and carry them to White-Hall where he had Audience and private Conferences with Nell Wall the Dutchess and the King himself and where he had sometimes given for secret service a Hundred and Two Hundred Pound at a time and was no less slabber'd by his Gracious Soveraign than Dangerfield had been before So zealous were We for the Popish Cause that rather than miss of the Designs of enslaving the Nation by Arbitrary Government and Popery that We would have declar'd our selves even to have kiss'd the Tail as well as the Cheeks of the most Contemptible Creatures in the World Nor must it be omitted as an Argument of His Majesty's great Zeal for the Protestant Religion That when one Sergeant a Priest made a discovery of the Popish Plot from Holland which he caus'd to be transmitted to the Court with an intention to have discovered several others he was first brib'd off by Pillory-Carr then sent for into England slightly and slily examined had his Pardon given him and sent back with Five Pound a week to say no more And in this game that we may understand by whose Countenancing the thing was done Sir L. Ienkins shewed the utmost of his Parts and Fidelity being just enter'd Secretary in the room of another who did not care to venture so far as that both Fool as well as Knave did Among whose good Services to his Master we may reckon his endeavours as much as lay in his Power to conceal the Murther of the Priest at Abbeville in France upon intimation that he was coming into England to make a farther discovery of the Plot Which together with his fasting and other infallible tokens shewed him to be plainly what was well enough known before Father Goff's Creature as well as the King 's and Duke's Nor was it a thing less astonishing to the Nation to see the Parliament prorogued from time to time no less than seven times before permitted to sit on purpose to get time for the Popish Duke to settle the Protestant Religion in Scotland and to the end the Conspirators might get heart and footing again and retrieve their Losses in England and in this Interval it was that Messengers were sent to their Friends at Rome and others their Associates for Money to strike while the Iron was hot in regard that Scotland by this time was secur'd and all things in such a forwardness that now or never was the time but the Pope had such an ill opinion of our Soveraign's Fidelity that he slipt his neck out of the Collar and in imitation of him the rest excused themselves upon the score of their poverty Thus missing money from Rome and the rest of their Popish Associates and the King of France refusing to part with any more Cash there was no way but one at a forc'd-put which was to let the Parliament sit and to make them the more willing to give money to undo the Nation the King in a framed Speech told them of the wonderful Advantageous Alliances for the Kingdoms good he had made with Foreign Princes and particularly with Hâ—lland and how necessary it was to preservâ— Tangier which had already run him in Debt Upon which Considerations the Burden of his Song was More Money But the Parliament Incensed at the frequent Prorogations fell upon Considerations more profitable for the Kingdom such as were the bringing to Condign punishment the Obstructers of their Sitting the Impeaching of North for Drawing the Proclamation against Petitioning and three of the Judges for dismissing the Grand Jury before whom the Duke was Indicted of Recusâ—ncy before they could make their presentments the prosecution of the Popish-Plot and the Examination of the Meal-Tub-Sham all which they lookt upon to be of greater moment than the King's Arguments for his wants For it was well known that by His perâ—idious Dealings abroad he had so impaired his Credit with all the Foreign Princes to whom he sent that they slighted his Applications as one upon whose Word they could never Rely And as for the preservation of Tangier there was nothing less in his Thoughts A fine Credit for a Prince and an excellent Character to recommend him to Posterity that he had no other than his own Sinister ends upon the Grand Council of his Kingdom nor no other way to work them to â—hose ends unless by forging untruths to make them accessary to the betraying of the â—eople that had entrusted them The Parliament therefore bent all their Cares to secure the Kingdom from Popery â—oncluding that the Dukes Apostâ—tizing from â—is Religion was the sole Evil under which â—he Nâ—â—â—ons in a more particular manner â—roaned and consequently that he was to 〈◊〉 Dismoâ—â—ted But the King being reâ—â—lved not to forsake his Brother whatever â—â—came of the Kingdom out of a proâ—ense â—alice to the Nation and â—oresight of the Miseries which his Brother's Government would bring upon the people rather than out of any natural Affection that he bore him took such a high Resentment against these honest and just proceedings of the Houses that after he had Sacrificed the Lord Stafford to his hopes of obtaining money upon the Dukes undertaking to furnish him he Dissolved this Parliament too with promise of another at Oxford to sweeten the bitter Pill which he had made the Nation to swallow In the mean time all the Care imaginable was taken to bring the Protestant-Plot to perfection preparative to which Judges were selected with Dispositions Thoughts and Minds as Scarlet as their Gowns And the Choice of Sheriffs was wrested by force from the people that they might pick out Juries without Conscience and Honesty A Plot contrived by Perfidiousness and Treachery beyond the parallel of History A Plot with Parisian Massacre in the Belly oâ— it designing no less an Innundation of Innocent Protestant Blood under the colour and forms of Justice and yet
been acquitted All which severities were palpable demonstrations of that Innocent Man's being determined to Destruction right or wrong on purpose to lay the foundation of farther Butcheries So that being fleshed by this Success the next attempt of the King's Justice was upon the Earl of Shaftsbury for the same pretended Treason for which Colledge had suffered And here posterity will make the same Observations and Conclusions in general as in Colledge's Case But more particularly will after Ages easily conclude from hence that it was not for any Contrivance of his Lordship but by a project of Court and Popish Revenge to destroy a person who by his Courage Wisdom and Good Intelligence had Opposed and Defeated so many of their Designs against the Religion and Welfare of the Nation For that this Plot upon his Lordship was so early Communicated to Rome and other Foreign parts That it was talked of at Paris and in Flanders some time before his Lordship was Imprisoned in England They will observe the Injustice done his Lordship in refusing to let him see or know the persons that deposed against him which was not denied either to Coleman or the Iesuites and which being so contrary to Law was a plain Demonstration that either the Witnesses were not thought of credit sufficient to support the Confinement of so great a Peer or else that it was not convenient to trust the general course of their Lives to be scrutinied too soon They will admire at the horrid Injustice done his Lordship in refusing to give an Oath to those that offered to have sworn two Indictments of Subornation against the False Testimonies produced against his Lordship The first president of such an Illegal Obstruction of Justice They will observe the Treachery that was used to have betrayed his Lordship into the Snare For what greater piece of Treachery could there be than after they had intercepted a Letter directed to his Lordship out of France from a Gentleman that had commanded a Regiment of Horse in the Service of C. the I. which Letter was only to desire his Lordship to befriend him with a Receipt of the Gout they added to it a Postscript wherein the Gentleman is made to tell his Lordship That he was able to furnish him with Forty Thousand Men from France to oppose the D. of York and so sent it back again into France to have been returned into England and intercepted a second time but that by a strange providence the Letter happened into the Gentleman's own hands who was not a little consternated at the alteration The Motives that induced the Court to begin with this Great and Eminent Peer will be easily discernible to succeeding Ages For to what man of Sense and Reason is it not apparent that it was the Policy of the Court That their Revenge against this Earl should not be adjourned till they had tried the Credit of their Witnesses upon other considerable Persons for fear lest by his Lordship's Industry and Abilities he should not only have detected and exposed the whole Intreague but have broken the Engine by which the two Brothers thought to have made themselves Absolute Lords of the Laws and Religion of the Kingdom For which reason it was thought best to assault him by way of surprise and to hurry him to prison upon a pretended Conspiracy which People would be astonished at but not have time to unravel For the King and his Brother were assured That the convicting of the E. of Shafâ—sbury upon a Charge of Levying War and Conspiring to seize his Person would be a kind of moral proof against every other Person whom they had a mind to accuse of the same Crime Since people would be easily persuaded That a Person of his prudence and conduct would not easily embark himself in such a dangerous Enterprise without a proportionable number of persons who by their Power Quality and Interest might be supposed to be able to carry it on So that all the Noblemen and Gentlemen of England that ever had any Converse or Acquaintance with the Earl supposing them to be persons obnoxious to the Court were involved in his Ruine But it will remain an Eternal Monument of Reproach upon Royal Subornation That after all the Industry of the Court and their obsequious Instruments after all their laying their heads together to form cohering and probable Proofs of the charge intended to be laid against him after an Illegal Trick devised to have Tryed him within their own Jurisdiction of the Verge which was so contrary to Law that it was exploded by their own Bene placito Lambskin men that at length he was acquitted by a Grand Jury the most Substantial for Estates Integrity and Soundness of Judgment that had been returned for many years in the City to the never dying praise of the two Sheriffs Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Shute A Disappointment which so incensed the King and his Dear Brother That they resolved to make an Islington Village of the Chief Metropolis of the whole Nation and what they could not do by Fire to effect by wresting from them their Franchises and Privileges far more Ancient than the descent of those that wrested them for a time out of their hands For this Reason the Attorney General was ordered to bring a Quo Warranto against the City Charter under the pretence of their Petitioning for the Sitting of the Parliament a thing so far from being a Crime that it was the undoubted Right of the Nation And yet such was the awe which the Antiquity and Legality of the Charter had upon the Judges that the Fountain of Justice was forcâ—d to shift his Chief Justice till he could fix upon one that durst adventure to pronounce Sentence against it Which as it was the greatest Invasion that could be against the Ancient and Fundamental Constitutions of the Kingdom so it plainly laid open the King 's Pious intentions of Governing by Law which according to the new Interpretation of the Court was the downright Subverting all that was most Sacred and Valuable in the Nation For what was all this Bustle for But as Charters of all other Cities and Corporations were chopt and changed throughout the Nation to the end the King might have it in his power to violate the electing of a Parliament and nominate and obtrude upon all Persons of the Kingdom his own Slaves and Creatures Papists and Traytors to their Countrey so by reducing one of the most Ancient Corporations and levelling it with one of the meanest Villages in the Kingdom that he might command the Mayor and Sheriffs and by their means the Juries of the City on purpose to have the Lives of all his Protestant Subjects at his mercy And that this was his end was apparent by the Consequences for when once the King by the overthrow of the Charter had made sure of his own Sheriffs and Juries Heavens how were the Laws of God and the Kingdom wrested by misinterpretation how were
subvert their Laws and Liberties to undermine and impoverish their Estates and Fortunes and to reduce a Plump Wealthy and Well-nourish'd Nation into a Skeleton of a Kingdom what could be more infernally ingrateful Yet that this was the Study and Practice of his whole Reign the following Passages will make Geometrically demonstrable The King was not ignorant that he was furnish'd already with a stock of Gentlemen who being forc'd to share the Misfortunes of his Exile and consequently no less imbitter'd against those whom they lookt upon as their Oppressors he had moulded them to his own Popish Religion and Interests by corrupting them in their Banishment with him to renounce the Protestant Doctrine and Worship and secretly reconcile themselves to the Church of Rome Insomuch that Mr. R. offer'd to prove one day in the Pensionary House of Commons that of all the Persons yet Persons all of Rank and Quality who sojourn'd with the King abroad there were but three then alive viz. P. Rupert the Lord M. and Mr. H. Coventry who had not been prevail'd upon by his Majesty to go to Mass. Nor could their being restor'd to their Estates at his return separate them from their Masters Interests for that besides the future Expectations with which the King continually fed them and the Obligations that the Principles of the Religion to which they had revolted layd them under they had bound themselves by all the Oaths and Promises that could be exacted from them to assist and cooperate with him in all his Designs for the Extirpation of the Protestant Religion and introducing of Popery though they were dispenced with from appearing bare-fac'd So soon therefore as the Parliament that gave him admittance into the Kingdom was Dissolv'd the King call'd another the first of his own Calling and so ordered the Matter that the greatest part of the Mask'd Revolters got in amongst the Real Protestants By which means all things went trim and trixy on the King's side They restor'd him the Militia which the Long Parliament had wrested out of his Fathers hands they sacrific'd the Treasure of the Nation to his Profuseness and Prodigality the only Vertue in him that sav'd us from utter Ruin for had he been more sparing he had done us more mischief They offer'd up the Rights and Liberties of the People by advancing his Prerogative and what was most conducing to the King 's Popish Designs they made him by private Instructions those Penal Statutes which divided the two prevailing Protestant Parties and set them together by the Ears by arming one Party of the Protestants against all the rest such a darling advantage to the Papists and upon the obtaining of which he set so high a value that neither the necessity of his Affairs at any time afterwards nor the Application and Interposure of several Parliaments for removing the grounds of our Differences and Animosities by an Indulgence to be past into a Law could prevail upon him to forego the advantages he had got of keeping the Protestants at mutual Enmity one with another and making them useful to their own Designs of supplanting the Protestant Religion and re-establishing the Idolatry of Rome Nor was this all but that he might carry on his Popish Designs the more safely and covertly under the cursed Mask of Hypocrisie he procur'd the passing of an Act in his Pensionary Parliament 1662. whereby it was made forfeiture of Estate and Imprisonment for any to say the King was a Papist or an Introducer of Popery Nevertheless notwithstanding he was thus become a Protestant by the Law of the Land to repeat how he exerted the Power given him by the P2rliament how he persecuted and prosecuted the Protestant Nonconformists from one end of the Kingdom to the other how he caus'd them to be Excommunicated imprison'd and harrass'd when nto a Papist in the Three Kingdoms was so much as troubled or molested is a thing that would be altogether needless as being so well known to the World and still too sadly remembred by Thousands of Families that to this day too deeply wear the Scars of his Cruel Dilaniations However it shew'd sufficiently the aim of our dear Defender of the Protestant Faith which was to weaken and enervate the Protestant Party that so they might be come the more easie Prey to Popish Rage and Cruelty when the blessed Hour should arrive for the putting in Execution those bloody designs with which he had been so long travailing which because he could not carry on without assistance therefore although he were sometimes oblig'd by the necessity of his Affairs and in complyance with the Times to palliate his Contrivances to make use of sincere and real Protestants yet they who were admitted into his secrets and in whom he placed his chiefest Trust and Confidence were always Papists He who would needs have himself enacted the best Protestant in his Dominions took no notice that whosoever was reconciled to Rome stood debarr'd from all Offices and obnoxious to several kinds of punishment but still out of the number of Papists or else such as were of no Religion at all which was the same thing for his purposes chose his Embassadors Generals Ministers of State and many of his greatest Bishops too What else recommended Sir W. Godolphin to be Embassador in Spain or Sir Lionel I. to be his Plenipotentiary at Nimeguen and afterwards his drudging Sham-plot Secretary It was his being a zealous Roman Catholick that preferr'd the Lord Clifford to the Treasurers Staff with several others of the same stamp to other high Preferments more Eminent for their Dignities than for their Parts and lastly what was it but this Indulgence and finding ways to dismiss the Papists without any harm or damage when Indicted or Presented at the Sessions that advanced so many Beneplacito Judges and continued them in their Places I had almost forgot another very great kindness which the same Parliament did him which was at the Private Instance of the King to abrogate the Triennial Act by which the sitting of Parliaments once in three years was infallibly secur'd to the Kingdom So well did his Majesty know where the Shoe pinch'd him and so crafty was he to take his Advantage from the Delirium and Frenzy the Nation was in upon his Restoration to obtain the repealing of the Principal Laws by which his wriggling into Arbitrary Government would have been curb'd and restrain'd But whether it were that the Prodigal Zeal of those Members began to cool conscious perhaps that they had already open'd too large a Gap to Tyrannous Invasion upon the Liberties of the People which they had so treacherously laid at the Kings Mercy or whether it were that the King resolv'd to quicken his pace to Arbitrary Rule to the end he might see Popery flourish in his own Days certain it is that his next Attempt was to make the Parliaments themselves the Ministers and Instruments of his own Popish Ambition and our Slavery In order
hereunto he falls a buying and purchasing at certain and annual Rates the Votes of the Members at what time the greatness of the number of those who stood ready for Sale as well as their Indigencies and Lusts made the Price at which they were to be bought so much the easier Now being thus hir'd by his Majesty with their own free Offerings of the Nations Money How many Bills did they pass into Acts for enslaving and ruining a third part of the Kingdom under the Notion of Phanaticks and Dissenters and all this in gratitude for their Sallaries and to accomplish the Will and Pleasure of their Lord and Master the King whose bought and purchas'd Vassals and Slaves they were All this while what can we say or think other but that the Purchaser as well as the Sellers were equally guilty of betraying the People who had entrusted them And then to make a President by Law for Tyranny those Hirelings empower'd the Iustices of the Peace to disseize Men of their Estates without being convicted and found guilty by Legal Juries of the Transgressions whereof they stood accus'd By which they not only overthrew all the Common and Statute Law of the Land but they subverted and altered the Fundamental Constitution in making English Men liable to be ruin'd at the Arbitrary Pleasure of the King And as an addition to this those Mercinary Members by the Orders and Directions of their most Pious and Protestant Paymaster the King past another Law which was stiled the Act for Corporations by which Men of Principles and Integrity were debarred all Offices of Magistracy in Cities and Corporate Towns The woful Effects of which the Kingdom not long after both saw and felt in the Surrenders of Charters and betraying of Franchises by Persons upon whom the Government of the Corporations came to be devolv'd by Vertue of that Act. For that had it not been for that Act which excluded so many honest able and vertuous Men the Persons whom the King for his by-ends nominated for fit and loyal Men would never have risen above the Office of Scavengers or Headboroughs or Constables at the highest To this as a thing that mainly contributed to the King's design of enslaving us we may subjoyn their passing an Act whereby they did both limit and confine the number of those that were to present Petitions to the King not to exceed Ten Persons Let the Matter to be represented be ne're so important or the Grievance to be redress'd never so illegal and oppressive yet it was made no less then a Riot if above Ten Persons address'd themselves to the King to crave the Benefit of the Law A Trouble which the King carefully provided against knowing how many Laws he had to break and how burthensom and oppressive he must be to the People before he could compleat the Fabrick of Slavery and Popery which he was erecting Nor was this all for the King strenuously pursuing his Design of being sincere and cordial to the destruction of his People had so bephilter'd them with his Potions of Aurum Potabile that they pass'd another Act to his Hearts desire whereby they plac'd the whole and sole Power of the Militia in the King not only encouraging him to use Force in compassing his Arbitrary Designs but binding up the Hands of the People from defending themselves against armed Violence upon their Religigion Liberties and Lives Add to this the vast sums which they gave him beyond what the Support of the Government or the Defence of the Nation requir'd Which might have produc'd fatal Consequences but that the King knew as little a Measure in spending as that unhappy Parliament did in giving The King therefore conscious of his own Failing and finding that through his own Wastfulness and the Importunities of his consuming Misses he could not depend upon any limited and definite Sum for accomplishing his Promises to his Holy Father the Pope and his trusty Confederate the French King got Two Bills prepar'd and carry'd into the House the Passing of which had compleated the Nations Misery and made him Absolute The one was to empower his Majesty upon Extraordinary Occasions of which he would not have fail'd to have been the Judge as often as he pleas'd to raise Money without a Parliament And the other was for setling a Universal Excise upon the Crown The Passing either of which the King well knew would have soon â—nabl'd him to have govern'd by Basha's and Ianizaries and redeem'd him from having any further need of Parliaments or any apprehension of having the Instruments of his Tyranny impeach'd by Them But what the King had so finely projected to enslave the Nation and obtain whatever he had a mind to prov'd the Ground of their Disappointment and the Occasion of the Nations Escape from the Snare that was laid for it For the Mercenary Members foreseeing that the passing these Bills would have put an end to their Pensions by rendring them useless for the time to come consulted their Gain and preferring it above what the Court styl'd their Loyalty fell in with the Honest Party and so became assistant in throwing out the Bills However the very bringing the Bills into the House was as clear an Evidence of the King's Intention to alter the Government and enslave the Nation as if they had pass'd into Laws And some of his Minions that knew the King's Drift and the inside of his Heart were so zealous for him to have gain'd this Arbitrary Power that they would have it argu'd and spoken to in the House of Lords And who but the Popish Lord Clifford should be the Man that ventur'd to undertake the Business And accordingly he made a long Harrangue in praise of Absolute Monarchy and how much it would be for the Interest of the Kingdom to have his Majesty entrusted with a more unlimited Authority Which some of the Lords resenting with a Warmth and Indignation becoming Persons who by the Constitutions of the Governmeut were design'd for a Bulwark against the Encroachments of Regal Power and as a Fence about the Liberties of the People the Motion not only dy'd without being seconded but Clifford even by him who had encourag'd him in his Attempt was call'd a rash Fool for his pains However Pious AEneas finding the Nation grew sensible of his covert Intentions and Encroachments upon their Laws and Liberties and despairing to get any more Acts pass'd in Parliament toward the promoting his Designs resolv'd to husband the Laws he had already obtain'd as much as he could to the Ruine of the Nation and where they fail'd of being serviceable to his Ends to betake himself to other Methods and Means And therefore besides the daily impoverishing confining and destroying of infinite numbers of honest and peaceable People under pretence of executing the Laws he made it his Business to invent new Projects to tear up the Rights and Liberties of the People by ways and means which had not the least
sent for to be Examined at Whitehall where he managed himself with that Courage that though he were Brow-beaten and opposed most strenuously though there were many that studied by all the ways imaginable to dash and confound him yet it was impossible he stood as firm as a Rock and gave such pregnant Reasons for what he said that the Council how unwilling soever to meddle or stir in his behalf yet at last were constrained by the clearness of his Evidence to grant Warrants for the seizure of several Priests that Night who were taken and sent to Prison Upon this followed the Assassination and Murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfry perpetrated by the Countenance and Connivance of the King as well a by the Contrivances and express Command of the Duke For proof of which a little opening of the Cause and Occasion and a short relation of the Effects Consequences and Events which enstied upon it will both enlighten us to the truth of the Matter and confirm our Belief who were the Authors of and Accessors to it For as has been already said that Gentleman had received an Information upon Oath from Dr. Oats about a Plot against our Laws Lives and Religion But finding somthing in the Deposition that reflected upon Mr. Coleman with whom he had an intimate Acquaintance he thereupon took an opportunity to let him understand what Information he had receeived and to tell him that the only way to justifie his own Innocency was to contribute all his Endeavours and Assistance to prevent so Bloody 〈◊〉 Design But Coleman instead of denying â—he Truth of those things which Sir Edmund related or offering his Endeavours â—o obstruct the Progress of it or to deâ—eat the Success of the Plot not only acâ—nowledged that there was a Conspiracy â—gainst our Laws Liberties and Religion but that it was advanced so far and seconded by Persons of that Quality in the Nation and Figure in the Government there was no possibility to give a Lett or Disappointment to it And more particularly he told him that the King was the Principal Author and Chief Promoter of the whole Design of overthrowing the Protestant Religion and altering the Government which Coleman calling to mind after his being committed to Newgate and considering that by that means Sir Edmond was enabled to come in a second Witness against him he therefore order'd it so as not only to get the Duke acquainted with his own danger but that His Highness and others whom he had mentioned in conversation with Sir Edmund were in the seme Predicament and would certainly be brought upon the Stage To which he received this Answer from the Duke That he should not be apprehensive of any danger from Sir Edmund in regard there would be a way found to prevent his hurting Coleman or any body else Now that he was thereupon most barbarously Murdered is a thing too well known and then by whose Authority it was done the Circumstances make it plain First the Circumstance of the Place as being committed in one of the Courts of the King's Palace in some of the Apartments of which the Murther'd Body was also concealed for several days The next circumstanâ—e was the guarding of the Gate and Avenues of the Palace so strictly all the time and denying the People their wonted Liberty of access to the House and passage through which could not have been done but by the King's Authority Nor would the Dutchess of Portsmouth and somebody of the same Sex greater than She have adventured to have gone and viewed the Body while it lay there concealed by which they involved themselves in the Guilt of the Crime but that they knew they could not be called to an Account for it considering by whose Connivance and Command the Fact was committed Nor was it a less Argument that the King was privy to the Fact That he protected from Justice both the Duke and others which were charged with that Murther Than which nothing more than the doing of it with his own hands could lay him under the Reproach and Inâ—amy of it before Men and under the dreadful Guilt of it before God Add to this That when we consider the Motives that urged the necessity of this Murther which was Coleman's having acknowledg'd to Sir Edmund that the King as well as the Duke was in the Conspiracy to alter the Government and overturn our Religion it would be nonsense to believe the King less willing to have him destroy'd than his Brother Since no Body at that time was so sorry for the detection of that part of the Plot as the King neither did any body labour afterwards to baffle the belief of it as he did Nor had he any thing in the World to excuse himself for so doing but that he was the principal Author of all that part of the Popish Plot which related to the overthrow of the Laws and Religion of the Nation and the destruction of the chief and most zealous Protestants in the Kingdom as was sufficiently acknowledged by Coleman not only to Sir Edm. Godfrey but to the Committee of Parliament that examined him in Newgate Which was so plain that nothing influenced those Gentlemen to conceal that part of his Confession in their Report to the House but their pity and compassion to the King which would not permit them to expose him so black as in truth he was to the Nation though it was as certain that they frequently imparted their Knowledge to their Frinds Nor did it a little add to confirm the Truth of what is here related That Emissaries should be sent from the Court to deal under-hand with the Coroner and the Jury to have gotten a Verdict of Felo de se. But the proofs of his being murther'd were so apparent such as his Neck being broke and the cleanness of his Shoes that nothing could corrupt the Jury from bringing it in otherwise than it was Under these Distresses did the King and the Duke labour Terribly afraid of the approaching Parliament for the sake of their Popish Minions and Instruments whose utmost care and industry could not prevent it but that several of Coleman's Letters and other Papers were found which detected the Negotiations of the King and Duke for all the World can never separate them by maintaining that the Duke durst ever have transacted such Treasons abroad being then no more than another Subject without his Brother's Consent so that they were in an extraordinary quandary whether the Parliament should Sit or no. But the King 's extreme necessity for Money prevail'd upon him to let them Sit Besides that the King who all along acted under his Protestant Mask was sensible that the Kingdom would have cry'd out shame had he put off the Parliament of such a Conjuncture of Combustion and Distraction as that was 〈…〉 spent the Money upon his other Occasions and kept up the Army 〈◊〉 Nevertheless to excute the Fraud and Châ—at which he had put upon the disguâ—â—ed
Nation he tells the Parliament That he had been obliged to kâ—ep up his Troops to keep his Neighbâ—urs from absolute Despair and that he had been solicited from abroad not to disband them Now was ever such a Story told by a Prince and vouched in the face of the Nation by a Bred Lawyer viz. his Chancellor to justifie the Breach of a Law of the Three Estates of the Kingdom as soon as made and then to flâ—m the Parliament off with Christendom and the Worlds commending us for breaking our own Laws to patch up a Peace which tended to nothing but the Ruine of those for whom it was made The sum of which was in short That the King to serve his own Arbitrary Ends had run hâ—mself 〈…〉 〈…〉 that many Papers of great Importance had with a more than ordinary Industry been convey'd away yet by those that were found so much appeared that the House Voted it to be a damable Plot to root up and destroy the Religion and Government of the Kingdom and privately got the Lord Chief-Justice Sâ—broggs to sign Warrants for the Apprehending the Popish Lords which was done accordingly And for their further Security they prepared a Bill for putting the Nation into a posture of Defence and for raising the Militia throughout the Kingdom to be in Arms for so many days Which passed Both Houses without any difficulty but the King out of his Zeal to the Protestant Religion refused to pass it And then it was that the Parliament found too late the Compliment which they had pass'd upon him in returning him the Power of the Militia which he made use of to keep up Standing Armies for their Destruction but refused for the Security of the Nation This therefore not prevailing they began to provide against Papists sitting in either House and fram'd a Bill with a Test to be taken by every Member of both Houses or else to lose their Seats This though his Protestant Majesty durst not openly oppose himself yet after a close Consultation held at St. Iames's he ordered all his Instruments in the Lords House to withstand the passing of it there which though they could not effect yet they prevail'd so far that they got a Proviso in it for the D. of York whereby they did him the kindness as to declare him a Papist to all the World After this the Parliament proceeded to the impeaching of such Persons as they had found to be deepest in the Contrivance of all our Mischiefs but That His Majesty lookt upon as a Business that so nearly concerned his own Honour that like his Father when the D. of Buckingham was accus'd of poysoning his Father he would not endure the Parliament in such a Iehu-like Chace after the Popish Conspirators but foot-ball'd them again with a Prorogation for several Months So careful was his Protestant Majesty to stifle as much as in him lay and to prevent the Prosecution of an Infernal Plot which he knew was so deeply laid like the Axe of Popery to the root of all his Protestant Dominions Nor was this all for so soon as he had dismiss'd the Parliament and had secur'd his Accomplices he took all the care imaginable to discredit Oates and Bedlow's Evidence Forty One was again inculcated into all the Ignorant Pates about the Town and Merry-Andrew Roger had his Pension out of the Gazetts continued to ridicule the Plot which he did in a most leud and shameless manner and Money given to set up a new Divinity Academy in a Publick Coffee House to act the Protestant Whore of Babylon and give about his Revelation-Cup to the Raw Inferior Clergy and instruct them in better Doctrine than ever they learnt in the University Nor did he stop at the endeavouring to discredit the Testimonies of those Witnesses but sent his Head-Emissaries to corrupt them to a denial and retracting what they had discovered and when that would not do Knox and Lane were suborn'd to accused Otes of Buggery thereby to bave taken him Acts of the foulest ignominy which whether a Protestant King would have encouraged to the ruine of the Religion which he professed in partial postcrity will determine with a clearer and more unclouded sight For we God knows are so dazled with those Illustrious Beams of feigned Protestant Majesty that we are not able to stare upon those Rays without blinding our Eyes out of a false Devotion to the Sun of our vain Imagination Add to this his endeavouring to corrupt the yet untainted Members of the House and buy their Votes to the utter exhausting of his Treasure for that which was then call'd Secret Service And which was more than all the rest his Dissolution of this Enquiring Parliament at the Sollicitation of the Duke and the rest of his guilty Minions by the Advice of a certain Lady who to save her Husband from the Impeachment he lay under persuaded them to get the King totally to Dissolve the Parliament using this Argument That in regard the Nation were so dissatisfied in this it would be a means to gain him the favour of the people and baffle the Impeachment by getting it Dissolv'd especially when it should be known that it was done by his procurement So that the Lady's Advice being followed the Parliament was as easily Dissolv'd as it had been a little before lasciviously Prorogued after a continuance of Seventeen Years to the great Admiration of all men tho indeed it proved in some measure a happy day for England For the Dissolution so enraged the Band of Pensioners finding their Service so slighted and their livelihood lost that they began to talk loud and discovered those things which were no way for the disadvantage of the Nation But here we are t observe the extraordinary Diligence of his Protestant Majesty to get the next Parliament fit for his Turn which was suddenly to be called to stop the mouths of the People To which purpose all the Money that could possibly be spared out of the Chequer was issued out to C. B. to manage the Elections all over the Kingdom under the old Notion of secret Service in one Article 1500 l. in another 2000. and the Guinea's stew about the Countrey far and near to the Corporations to hire places and get fit men the Heads of the Counties and Corporations were sent for and told what men would be serviceable and acceptable to the King and particularly the Gentlemen of Essex were sent to by the Ch. Just. Schroggs and cautiones that they should not chuse Mildmay whatever they did And new Charters were obtained foâ— some Corporations with new Privileges and 〈◊〉 them down to be hung out at the Windows to animate the People to chuse such men as they were directed What could more have been done by a Protestant Prince to destroy his Protestant Subjects and advance the Roman-Catholick Cause But when the Conspiraters saw that nothing would but that they perceived that they were deceived in their Expectations by
the unanimous choice of the People then all ways were studied to put them upon Rocks and to set them together by the Ears and throwing in Bones among them and by working them to fly upon the Ministers of State as the only infallible means to blow them up as being sure of the King's Resolutions to interpose between them and danger whatever became of the Parliament and Kingdom If this fail'd the King was furnish'd with another contrivance which was so cajole and delude them by pretending all the Sincerity and Reality in the World when he meant quite the contrary and rather than miss of his Designs to publish himself to Posterity the greatest Knave in nature and to let the world know how much he could out-do Tiberius in dissimulation To this purpose when the Project of the King 's rejecting the Commons Choice of their Speaker fail'd tho it were done on purpose by the King to pick a quarrel with the House as soon as they sate the King pursuing his old methods of speaking with his Lips what was farthest from his heart went to the House of Lords and there tells the Parliament a plausible Story how he had consented to the Exclusion of the Popish Lords from their Seats in Parliament to the Execution of several Criminals both upon the score of the Plot and the Murder of Sir Ed. B. Godfrey but above all how he had commanded his Brother to absent himself from him because he would not leave the most malicious men room to say he had not removed all Causes which could be pretended to influence him towards Popish Counsels In all which there was not one word of Thruth as to the Motives that engaged him to do what he did For as to the Exclusion of the Popish Lords he knew it was what he could not avoid unless he would have absolutely thrown off his Protestant Mask which he was sensible it was not seasonable for him then to do As for the Jesuits that were hang'd for the Plot he pleas'd himself as well as the people by sacrificing a few inconsiderable Miscreants to his own Revenge for ingratefully plotting against his Life who had all along been so faithâ—ul to their Cause and indeed it was but just they should dye like Knaves and Traytors who had been such fools to mistrust so true a Protestant Prince As to the Murtherers of Sir E. B. G. what could he have done less except he would have exposed himself to the Clamour of the whole Nation That would have been the greatest folly in the world for a Man that loved to sleep in a whole skin as he did for the preservation of three or four Rascals convicted of a bloody Murder to have sacrificed his Honour and his Safety to publick Scandal and Resentment And then as for the Removal of his Dear Brother it was done after a long and deep Consultation upon these Considerations First That the Duke's being out of the way might stop the farther Examination of the Plot in relation to himself and thereby one of the Chief Conspirators be preserved safe And secondly For a shew that the King was such an Enemy to Popery and Popish Councels that he would not suffer so much as the Breath of a Brother near him for fear of infection For in these Gracious Protestant Acts lay all his hopes of making the Parliament give Credit to his Words and getting Money from them at a time when the French King most treacherously failed him Tho while the King was thus endeavouring to cast a Mist before the Parliament's Eyes it was most certain that before the Duke went the King had promised him That nothing should be acted or done without being first imparted to him insomuch that the Speech which was to be made to the Parliament was concluded on before he went and tho he were absent in Flanders where Expresses reached him almost every hour yet the Grand Politicians of the Conspiracy staid behind and watched his Affairs at home as diligently as if he had been here in person Nevertheless the Parliament not being to be deluded by all those seeming Acts of Protestant Grace took little notice of those gaudy Trappings of the King's Discourse but fell briskly to work upon the Plot and the Murther of Sir E. B. G. to which purpose they made choice of a Secret Committee to pursue that Business by whose means great things were discovered insomuch That there were very few of the chiefest of those who were nearest about the King and most effectually possessed His Ear but were found to have some hand or finger in the Grand Conspiracy According to the Proverb Shew me the Company and I 'll tell thee the Man which put the Parliament to lay all other Considerations aside but those of securing the Nation against Popery and Arbitrary Government in order whereunto they began to think of bringing the Lords and others in the Tower to their Tryals And upon a report of their Committee of the D. of York's Letters wherein it appear'd what great joy had been conceived at Rome for the Duke's Conversion even to draw Tears from his Holiness's Eyes with several other Papers discovering much of the Court-Intreagues with Rome and the Fathers they Voted the hopes of his coming to the Crown to be one of the chief Causes of the Popish-Plot and ordered a Bill to disinable him to inherit the Imperial Crown of the Realm These Proceedings were of so high a Nature and so directly tending to the overthrow of that structure which the King and the Duke with the assistance of their Popish Counsels had been so long and so assiduously erecting that it was thought requisite to treat them with all the Art and Subtilty imaginable which produced two of the greatest Master-pieces that ever were acted by the Conspirators ever since their first designing Popery and French Tyranny The first was to blind and cozen the House of Commons by seeming to shew an utter dislike of all former Councils that had brought the Nation to the condition it was in In pursuance of which the old Council was dissolved and the greatest Sticklers against the Plot and for the Protestant Religion chosen into their room to the end the King might not be thought to be any longer influenced by Popish Advice and that if any miscarriages happen'd they might be all laid to their charge or that miscarriages might receive a more candid interpretation as being done by such good men against whose fidelity the Nation had no exception And thus were those Gentlemen gull'd in under pretence of the King 's more particular trust and favour to countenance many illegal contrivances to retrieve the bad condition of the Papists under the notion of their Approbation So that if Dissimulare be Regnare never had any Monarch more of Kingcraft in him than ours had to the destruction of his own Subjects The next Device was to turn the whole Plot and the Odium of it upon the Protestants
the Precepts even of Morality it self transvers'd the Witnesses for the King caressed and countenanced in their known Subornations the Testimonies for the pretended Criminals brow-beaten and run down and all the Arguments of Law and Reason urged by the most Learned Council of the Nation over-ruled by Hectoring and Swaggering Judges to take away the Lives of the Lord Russel Coll. Sidney Armstrong Cornish and several others merely to gratify the Rage of Popish Revenge Such were the Violences of the Court at that time in the defiance of Justice as if all fear of giving account to future Parliaments had been thrown off or that they never intended to be troubled with them more till they had framed the Nation into such a posture as to chuse such Members as would not only forgive such Villanies but go sharers with them in the Spoil of the Kingdom And indeed the eager Thirst of all the Great Men at White-hall was so apparent that nothing could be more by the violent Contests for Sheriffs fit for their Turns before they were Masters of the Charter insomuch that they laboured it with that Zeal as if they had been contending pro Aris Focis and some of them were heard to say That upon that hung all their hopes and without it they were undone For by the Verdicts of such Juries that such Sheriffs should return they were in hopes to cut off all that in their Stations had appeared for the Exclusion of the Duke or had shewed their constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion and the Laws of the Land which is easily demonstrable from the Catalogues of those that suffered or were forced to shelter themselves in Foreign Countries from the Malice of their Revengeful Prosecutors Nor was it less remarkable that as all along they embarked themselves in Designs pernicious and destructive to the King and Kingdom So that the structure of this was built upon as wicked a foundation was evident from the Instruments selected and encouraged by the favour of the King and his Brother to promote it For as they made use of the Scum of the World to perjure men out of their lives so they made use of the Scum of the City such as Dodson Masters Cradock Mern and others of the same stamp to give them the command of Juries proper to complete the Tragedies A most ready and clever way to extirpate by degrees the Patriots of our Religion and Liberties But that this was the Design of getting Court-Sheriffs Sir G. Iefferies who well knew the minds of his Superiors at White-hall was neither afraid nor ashamed to own For having after the Tryal of Sir Patience Ward desir'd him to give his Worship a Meeting at Sir Robert Claytons he there told him after an insulting manner That he had satisfied his Revenge for the Loss of the Recordership and besides that having such Sheriffs as they desir'd they had now the Law in their hands and could have the Life of whomsoever they pleas'd Otherwise it had been impossible but for the Treachery of the Judges that encouraged the Injustice of a packed Iury to have found the Lord Russel guilty of death when the whole of what was villanously sworn against him was in the opinion of far more honest and equally Learned Lawyers but Misprision of Treason or to have convicted Collonel Sydney upon Innuendo's made out of old Papers found in his Study and never published But then follow'd the barbarous and horrid Murther of the Earl of Essex which how far it could be laid to the King's Charge is somewhat as yet in the dark However that the King could find no other Morning to accompany his Brother to the Tower but that very Morning that the Earl was murther'd will no doubt very much augment the Suspicion of future Ages and it will be as odly look'd upon that when Letters and Proposals were sent to some Great Persons near the King That if His Majesty would but grant a Pardon to two or three Men that should be nam'd when the Favour was granted the whole Mystery of the Contrivance should be discovered and the Contrivers and Actors be particularly detected such a Proposal should be slghted and neglected There was also another Letter containing the same Offers addressed to the Countess of Essex and sent open to one Cademan a Bookseller in the New-Exchange which was also carried to one of the Secretary's notwithstanding all which there was not the least syllable published to encourage any Inquisition after that Nobleman's Blood which as it amazed all rational people at that time so it will reflect upon the King himself and his memory to all succeeding Ages Now after all these Tricks and Stratagems of the King to introduce Tyranny and Slavery to stifle the Popish-Plot by throwing it upon his Protestant Subjects after such an obstinate and stedfast Conjunction with the sworn Enemy of the Nation the French King for the Subversion of our Laws Liberties and Religion after so many Slights and Contempts to put upon the Grand Council of the Kingdom which he never Assembled but to empty and drain the Purses of the Nation so that there was not a Law which he consented to for the publick Good not a gracious Speech or Declaration to protect and preserve the Protestant Religion which the people did not purchase at a dear rate while the Dissenters among the rest paid for the very Thorns and Briars that tore their own Backs all this designed on purpose to render the Name of Parliaments odious and lastly a League concluded with the French King for their total Subversion After so many Bloody Executions of the chiefest Patriots and constant Assertors of the Protestant Faith to believe the King by whose Authority and by whose Countenance and Permission all this was done to be that sincere Protestant which he profest himself to be is for a Man to shut the Windows of his Understanding against the Light of common Reason But to shut the Door against all Objections that can be made in his behalf there is one proof yet remaining behind which must be an undeniable Convincement to all the World of the truth of what has been hitherto said as standing still recorded under his own Hand if the Original of the Instructions be Exant and that is the following Memorial of his Ambassador to the King of Poland in the year 1667. Most Illustrious Prince THE King my Master has Commanded me to let Your Majesty know the Resolution he has taken in all Points to concur with the Most Christian King in giving Your Majesty all possible Assâ—stance for the Establishing Your Majesties Title in such ways as Your Majesty shall think most effectual for the securing Your Crown and Dignity and the further Honour of Your Queen and Royal Issue The King my Master being truly sensible of the Great Misfortunes of those Princes whose Power must be bounded and Reason regulated by the fantastick Humours of their Subjects Till Princes can be freed
from those Inconveniences the King my Master sees no possible prospect of establishing the Roman Catholick Religion If this be not enough to discover his Inclinations and the whole drift of his Intrigueing Reign there can be nothing sharp enough to penetrate the stupid and besotted Bigotry of those that stand up in his Justification But notwithstanding the wilful Blindness of such People it is to be hoped that other Men less biassed and having the same just pretences to common Understanding have a greater value for their Reason than to forfeit it to Prejudice and an Interest now exploded by all the sober part of the World And having once disintangled their Judgments from the Incumbrances of Iure Divino Nonsence they will then find that the whole Course of his Reign was no more than what this Memorial discovers and that the frequent Breaches of his Word and Promises both to his Parliaments and People were but the Effects of the Religion he profess'd and own'd in his Ambassadors's Memorial one of the chief Principles of which it is Not to Keep Faith with Hereticks and by which he was obliged to be more faithful to the King of Poland than the King of Heaven Hence it was that notwithstanding his Declaration from Breda design'd and penn'd to obtrude a seeming appearance of Truth and specious Face of Integrity upon the Nation after he came to be Restor'd and Settl'd we found our selves deceived in all that we expected from the Faith and Credit of his Royal Word To which we may subjoyn that other famous Declaration upon shutting up of the Exchequer Wherein tho his Sacred Word and Royal Faith were in plain emphatical Terms laid to Pledge for Repayment yet the Events in the Ruin and Impoverishing of so many Families did no way consist with his graciuos and solemn Promises As for the Covenant whathever the Oath were it matters not here to dispute but they who were Witnesses of his taking it observed that if ever he seem'd Sincere in what he did it was in binding his Soul by that solemn Oath and yet he not only openly and avowedly broke it but caused it to be burnt in all the three Nations by the Hands of the Common Hangman Where can we find a more matchless piece of Dissimulation than in his Signing that Declaration in Scotland which he published under the Title of A Declaration of the King's Majesty to his Subjects of the Kingdoms of Scotland England and Ireland which because it has lain long dormant and was doubtless designed to have been buried in Oblivion may not now be unseasonable revived again to shew how much the World was deceived in him and how little reason his Admirers have to have so high an Opinion of him The whole is too long to be Inserted in these few Sheets but that which most conduces to our purpose is as follows HIS Majesty taking into Consideration the merciful Dispensation of Divine Providence by which he has been recover'd out of the Snare of Evil Counsel and having attain'd so full a Persuasion and Conscience of the Loyalty of his People of Scotland with whom he has too long stood at distance aâ—d of the Righteousness of their Cause as to join in one Covenant with them and to cast himself and his Interests wholly upon God and in all matters Civil to follow the Advice of his Parliament and such as shall be entrusted by them and in all matters Ecclesiastical the Advice of the General Assembly and their Commissioners and being sensible of his Duty to God and desirous to approve himself to the Consciences of all his good Subjects and to stop the Mouths of his and their Enemies and Traducers does in reference to his former Deportments and his Resolutions for the Future declares as follows Here is a Iove Principium the Motives that induced His Majesty to make this Declaration were no Considerations of State-Policy but in acknowledgment of the ill-merited Mercies of Divine Providence conferred upon him a Covenant between God the People and Himself like that of David in Hebron Now see what ensues Tho His Majesty as a dutiful Son be obliged to honour the Memory of his Royal Father and to have in Estimation the Person of his Mother yet doth he desire to be deeply humbled and afflicted in Spirit before God because of his Father's hearkning to and following Evil Counsels and his Opposition to the Work of Reformation and to the solemn League and Covenant by which so much of the Blood of the Lord's People has been shed in these Kingdoms And for the Idolatry of his Mother the Toleration whereof in the King's House as it was matter of great stumbling to all the Protestant Churches so could it not but be a high Provocation against him who is a Iealous God and visits the Sins of the Fathers upon the Children And altho His Majesty might Extenuate his former Carriages and Actions in following the Advice and walking in the way of those who are opposite to the Covenant and the Work of God and might excuse his delaying to give Satisfaction to the just and necessary Desires of the Church and Kingdom of Scotland from his Education and Age and from his Evil Counsel and Company yet knowing he hath to do with God he doth ingenuously acknowledg all his own Sins and all the Sins of his Father's House craving Pardon and hoping for Mercy and Reconciliation through the Blood of Iesus Christ. And his Majesty having upon full Persuasion of the Iustice and Equity of all the Heads and Articles thereof sworn and subscribed the National Covenant of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Solemn League and Covenant of the three Kingdoms of Scotland England and Ireland does declare That he has not sworn and subscribed these Covenants and entred into the Oath of God and his People upon any sinister Intention or crooked Design for obtainings his own Ends but as far as humane Weakness will permit in the Truth and Sincerity of hie Heart And that he is firmly resolved in thd strength of the Lord to adhere thereto ane to prosecute to the utmost of his Power all the Ends thereof in his Station and Calling really constantly and sincerely all the days of his Life After such a solemn Stipulation between Heaven and the Nation of Scotland no wonder that he had recourse to the Church of Rome for Absolution For seeing that he had such a Confidence of St. Peter's Power deriv'd to the Pope there is no other Argument to be urg'd in his behalf that either he thought there was any Faith to be kept with Man or that he believed in God And how far the Breach of this when we reflect how much he was abandoned to Misfortune and the Reproach of Infidelity both at Home and Abroad pursued him to his Grave is worthy the serious Consideration of his Brother and Lewis the 14 th But who could rationally hope that he should deal sincerely and above-board
And in regard that Argyle was said to be Landed under the Notion of a Rebel in Scotland they declared their Resolutions to stand by and assist him with their Lives and Fortunes against all his Enemies whatever No less quick to gratify than he to make those Promises which he never intended to perform And indeed under the Consternation the King was then in upon the Landing of Argyle in Scotland and the D. of Monmouth in England both at the same time perhaps the Parliament might have bound him up to what Conditions they pleas'd had they not slipt their Opportunity But those two Storms being fortunately blown over the one by ill Conduct the other by the Treachery of Pretended Friendship and both Argyle and the D. of Monmouth safe in their Graves the King was so puft up with a Petty Victory overy a few Clubmen and so wrapt up with a Conceit That he had now Conquer'd the whole Nation that after he had got as much as he thought he could in modesty desire or they part withal unless they saw greater Occasions than they did which nevertheless were no small Sums in the heat of their obliging Generosity at the Commencement of a Reign he turn'd him off after he had sold them two or three inconsiderable Acts for all their Mony And now being freed from any farther thoughts of Parliaments believing himself Impregnable he resolves to be Reveng'd upon the Western People for siding with his Capital Enemy Monmouth and to that purpose sends down his Executioner in Ordinary Iefferies not to decimate according to the Heathen way of Mercy but with the Besome of his Cruelties to sweep the Country before him and to depopulate instead of Punishment At what time Acquaintance or Relation of any that fell in the Field with a slender Circumstance tack'd to either was a Crime sufficient for the Extirpation of the Family And Young and Old were hang'd in Clusters as if the C. Justice had design'd to raise the Price of Halters besides the great Number of those that upon bare Suspicion were transported beyond Sea and there sold for Slaves and the Purchase-Mony given away to satisfy the Hunger of needy Papists After-Ages will read with Astonishment the barbarous Usage of those poor People of which among many Instances this one may seem sufficient whereby to take the Dimensions of all the rest That when the Sister of the two Hewlands hung upon the Chief Iustices Coach Imploring Mercy on the behalf of her Brothers the Merciless Judg to make her let go caus'd his Coachman to cut her Hands and Fingers with the lash of his Whip Nor would he allow the Respit of the Execution but for two days tho the Sister with Tears in her Eyes offer'd a Hundred Pound for so small a Favour And whoever sheltr'd any of those forlorn Creatures were hurried to the Slaughter-House with the same inexorable outrage without any Consideration either of Age or Sex Witness the Execution of the Lady Lisle at Winchester As for Argyle and the Duke tho they might die pitied yet could they not be said to be unjustly put to Death in regard they had declared Open Hostility and therefore it was no more than they were to expect upon ill Success However since they were betray'd into the Victor's Hands before any great harm was done the Crime was not so great that nothing but a Massacre could atone for it more especially considering what great Advantages the King made of these Rebellions For it gave him a fair Opportunity to increase the Number of his Standing-Forces under pretence That the Militia was not to be depended upon and of the Reputation he had lost of being so Miserably unprovided against so wretched an Attempt as Monmouth's was For which Reason he was resolv'd to be better provided henceforward for the Security of the Nation and to croud in his Popish Officers into Commands under the Notion of Persons of approv'd Loyalty and therefore such whose Persons he was neither to expose to disgrace by a Removal nor himself to suffer the want of Cautious and wary of Removing his Popish Commanders but minding not at all to remove the Fears and Jealousies of the Nation However his Plausible Promises and this Important Necessity of augmenting his Standing Forces were urg'd upon the Parliament as undeniable Reasons for More Mony So great a Confidence the King had either in the Awe which he had upon the Parliament or that they were so Blind that they could not see through his Cobweb Pretences But he soon found that he was deceived in his Expectations and therefore perceiving his Gilded Hooks could not take they were decently Dismiss'd after ten Days Sitting with a Prorogation from October till the Fâ—bruary ensuing But it seems King Iames was so confidently assur'd That the Bands of Friendship and Alliance between him and the French King were so Indissoluble That whatever Assistance the Parliament deny'd him in England he should not fail of from his Dear Friend and Confederate in France That the Parliament being call'd for no other Intent or Purpose than to Betray the Nation by Furnishing the King to accomplish his Designs of Popery and Arbitrary Government when they refused to be subservient to those Wicked Designs and thought it more Honourable to be true to the Nation whom they Represented than Serviceable to the Encroachment of his Tyranny he lay'd them aside as things no longer useful for him And therefore like a man chaâ—ed with their just denial of his Demands he resolves the utter Subversion of English Parliaments the only Remora's of his ungodly Projects by compleating the Disfranchising of all the Cities and Corporations throughout the Nation so fairly begun in his Brother's Reign to make way for the Introduction of a French Parliament That should at once have surrender'd all the Ancient Liberty of the Kingdom and the whole Power of the Government into his Hands And to Terrifie men into this slavish Complyance with his Tyrannical Will and Pleasure the Names of all such Persons as out of Honour and Conscience refused to Co-operate with his Popish Ministers towards the Publick Ruin of Liberty and Religion and prostitute their own and the Freedoms of their Posterity to his Arbitrary subjection were Threatned to be return'd up to the Attorney-General to the end their Persons and Estates might be undone by Illegal Prosecutions In the next place to set himself Paramount above all the Controul of Law out of a vain Opinion that Kings are accountable to none but God A set of Judges are pickt out to overturn the very Fundamentals of Humane Society and Annihilate the very ends of Government This the King knew must be done by Judges that had abandoned all High Opinion of God and Nature and had quitted all sense of Conscience and True Honour and had wholly given up their Judgments to the foolish Enticements of Ambition and Flattery And when he had found out such it was easie for
him to say with his Grandfather of the same Name Let me make what Iudges I please and I will easily have what I please to be Law No wonder then these Judges having Instruments drawn up by Brent which pass'd the Great Seal to Indemnifie them for whatever they did or said Illegally affirm'd it to the King for Law That the King was an Independent Prince That the Laws of the Kingdom were the Kings Laws That the Kings of England might Dispence with all Laws that regarded Penalties and Punishments as oft as necessity required That they were Iudges and Arbitrators who have Power to Iudge of the Necessity which may induce them to make use of these Dispensations And Lastly That the King of England could not Renounce a Prerogative annexed to the Crown By Vertue of which Concessions and Opinions of the Judges all the Laws in England made in the Reigns of four several Princes for the security of the Nation against Popery and Arbitrary Government were rendred of no Effect By Vertue of these Concessions Arundel of Warder was made Lord Privy Seal Alibone a Judge and Castlemain was sent with great Pomp an Embassador to Rome to be there contemn'd and despis'd by his Holiness for the bad name which his Master had among all the Princes of Europe and the ill Opinion the Pope himself had of him By Vertue of these Concessions it was that the greatest part of the Kingdom 's Military Safety and Defence was put into the hands of persons incapable to be intrusted with them by the Express Laws of the Kingdom and that the Execution of the Ancient Laws and Statutes of the Realm against divers sorts of Treasons and other hainous Crimes was stopt By Vertue of these Concessions Sir E. Hales was made Lieutenant of the Tower to Terrifie the City with his Mortar-pieces and level his Great Guns to the Destruction of the Metropolis of the Kingdom when the Word should be given him By Vertue of these Concessions it was that Peters was made a Privy Councellor to outbrave the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London that he had his four Provincial Bishops and that the Priests and Jesuites swarm'd in all parts of the Kingdom Built themselves Convents hired Mass Houses made open Profession of their Foppish Religion in the Chief City of the Nation and in several of the Great Cities and Towns of the Kingdom and publickly Ridicul'd the Scripture in their Pulpits All which Transgressions of all the Laws of the Land both Civil and Ecclesiaâ—tick are so fully Represented in the Memorial of the Protestants to their Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Orange That they cannot be more fully noâ— more sensibly repeated But the Inundation stopt not here it was to be a general Deluge or nothing at all To which purpose all Obstructions that oppos'd the â—orrent were to be levell'd or remov'd out of the way for effecting of which there could be no Engine thought sufficient but that of the Ecclesiastical Commission so arbitrary in its Origâ—nal that it had nothing but the Pillars of the Prerogative to support it and manag'd with that Arbitrary Fury by Iefferies That he look'd like a Monstrous Titan Warring against the Heaven of Law and Justice For he had no way to carry Illegality with a high hand but by arrogant Domineering and surly Incivility while he had nothing to offer to any Person that offer'd Law to him but Sic Volo Sic Iubeo To tell a Peer of England and the Bishop of London so much his Superiour only that he Sate upon the Throne of his Commission he that was not to be mentioned with the Bishop in the same day was such a foul piece of Exeuberance of his Guildhall Eloquence which only could have dropt from the lips of Insulting Barbarism All that can be said for him is this That as many men commit Absurdities when loden with Wine this was one of his Extravagancies in his Drink of Honour And indeed after he had tasted of that potent Charm the whole Course of his Behaviour seem'd to be a meer Intoxication which made him afterwards make use of the same Receipt to drown both his Life and his Dishonour together However the Suspending this Noble Peer and Bishop contrary to all pretence of Law for refusing to obey the Kings unjust and illegal Command was no such Advantage to the King's Cause that he had so much reason to thank the Chancellor or Peters either for putting him upon committing a greater Act of Injustice to justify a less The Bishop was too well and too generally belov'd among all the professors of Protestantism for the Papists to put such an Affront upon so Eminent a Father of the Protestant Church for them not to resent it even the more prudent Papists thought it a Proceeding too harsh and unreasonable and the more moderate look'd upon it as too base and unworthy so that the Hot-spurs of the King's Council were losers on every side And besides it was such a stabbing contradiction to the King's Speech in Council upon his Brother's Death That since it had pleased God he should succeed so good and gracious a Prince as his dear Brother he was resolv'd to follow his Example more especially in that of Clemency and Tenderness to his People That the barbarous suspending this Bishop was one of the main things which destroyed the solemn verity of Royal Word Which though he had falsified already in his severity to Otes and Dangerfield yet the Person of a Peer and Bishop and a Star of the first Magnitude in the Church of England render'd much more conspicuous But the King was under a necessity he had declar'd one thing to the Protestants but he had bound himself to do another for the Papists If he falsified with the Protestants the Papists could absolve him If he prov'd unfaithful to the Papists they would never forgive him And in this Dilemma he resolv'd to follow the Maxim of his Profession Not to keep Faith with Hereticks Neither were the steps he made the steps of State-convenience now and then upon an exigency but all in a huddle out of his Zeal to make large steps for fear he should dye and leave the Papists worse than he found them These severe Proceedings against the Bishop of London were the Violation of that part of his Declaration wherein he promis'd the Preservation of the Ecclesiastical Government as Established by Law But the Barbarous usage of the Gentlemen of both Maudlin Colledges was an unsanctified breach of another part of his Declaration wherein he no less solemnly engaged to maintain the Protestants in all their Properties and Possessions as well of Church as Abby-Lands as of all other their Properties whatsoever Notwithstand all which how he turn'd those Gentlemen out of their Legal Freeholds by the Arbitrary Power of his High Commission how he violated the Constitutions of the deceased Founders and with what an embitter'd rage and fury he rated