so spacious that her said Servants and Family may enter and stay therein In which there shall be an ordinary and publique door for them and another inward door by which the Infanta may have a passage into the said Chappel where she and others as above said may be present at Divine Offices 9. That the Chappel Church and Oratory may be beautified with decent Ornaments of Altar and other things necessary for Divine Service which is to be celebrated in them according to the custom of the Ho. Ro. Church and that it shall be lawful for the said Servants and others to go to the said Chappel and Church at all hours as to them shall seem expedient 10. That the care and custody of the said Chappel and Church shall be committed to such as the Lady Infanta shall appoint to whom it shall be lawful to appoint Keepers that no body may enter into them to do any undecent thing 11. That to the administration of the Sacraments and to serve in Chappel and Church aforesaid there shall be so many Priests and Assistants as to the Infanta shall seem fit and the election of them shall belong to the Lady Infanta and the Catholike King her Brother Provided that they be none of the Vassals of the King of Great Britain and if they be his will and consent is to be first obtained 12. That there be one Superiour Minister or Bishop with necessary Authority upon all occasions which shall happen belonging to Religion and for want of a Bishop that his Vicar may have his Authority and jurisdiction 13. That this Bishop or Superiour Minister may correct amend or chastize all Roman Catholiks who shall offend and shall exercise upon them all Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical and moreover also the Lady Infanta shall have power to put them out of her service when soever it shall seem expedient to her 13. That it may be lawful for the Lady Infanta and her Servants to procure from Rome Dispensations Indulgences Jubilees and all Graces as shall seem fit to their Religion and Consciences and to get and make use of any Catholike Books whatsoever 15. That the Servants of the Family of the Lady Infanta who shall come into England shall take the Oath of Allegiance to the King of Great Britain provided that there be no clause therein which shall be contrary to their Consciences and the Roman Catholike Religion and if they happen to be Vassals to the King of Great Britain they shall take the same Oath that the Spaniard doth 16. That the Laws which are or shall be in England against Religion shall not take hold of the said Servants And onely the foresaid Superiour Ecclesiastical Catholike may proceed against Ecclesiastical persons as hath been accustomed by Catholikes And if any Secular Judge shall apprehend any Ecclesiastical Person for any offence he shall forthwith cause him to be delivered to the aforesaid Superiour Ecclesiastick who shall proceed against him according to the Canon-Law 17. That the Lawes made against Catholikes in England or in any other Kingdom of the King of Great Britain shall not extend to the Children of this Marriage and though they be Catholikes they shall not lose the Right of Succession to the Kingdom and Dominions of Great Britain 18. That the Nurses which shall give suck to the Children of the Lady Infanta whether they be of the Kingdom of Great Britain or of any other Nation whatsoever shall be chosen by the Lady Infanta as she pleaseth and shall be accounted of her Family and enjoy the priviledges thereof 19. That the Bishop Ecclesiastical Persons and Religious of the Family of the Lady Infanta shall wear the Vestment and Habit of his dignity profession and Religion after the custom of Rome 20. For security that the said Matrimony be not dissolved for any cause whatsoever The King of Great Britain and Prince Charles are equally to pass the Word and Honour of a King and moreover that they will perform whatsoever shall be propounded by the Catholike King for further confirmation if it may be done decently and fitly 21. That the Sons and Daughters which shall be born of this Marriage shall be brought up in the company of the most Excellent Infanta at least until the Age of Ten years and shall freely enjoy the Right of Succession to the Kingdoms as aforesaid 22. That whensoever any place of either Man-servant or Maid-servant which the Lady Infanta shall bring with her nominated by the Catholike King her Brother shall happen to be void whether by death or by other Cause or accident all the said Servants of her Family are to be supplied by the Catholike King as aforesaid 23. For security that whatsoever is Capitulated may be fulfilled The King of Great Britain and Prince Charles are to be bound by Oath and all the King's Council shall Confirm the said Treaty under their hands Moreover the said King and Prince are to give their Faiths in the Word of a King to endeavour if possible that whatsoever is Capitulated may be established by Parliament 24. That conformable to this Treaty all these things proposed are to be allowed and approved of by the Pope that he may give an Apostolical Benediction and a Dispensation necessary to effect the Marriage But though our King and Prince subscribed these Articles as they were sent to them by the Earl of Bristol in this manner Hos supra memoratos Articulos omnes ac singulos approbamus et quicquid in iis ex nostra parte seu nostro nomine conventum est ratum atque gratum habemus approving and expressing them to be very acceptable unto them And after they had wrought the King to sign these large immunities to the Papists viz. Quod Regnorum suorum Romano Catholici persecutionem nullam patientur molestiáve officientur Religionis suae causa vel ob exercitium illorum ejusdem sacramentorum modò iis utantur absque scandalo quod intelligi debet inter privatos parietes nec juramentis aut sub alio praetextu qualicunque ordinem Religionis spectante vexabuntur That the Roman Catholikes should not be interrupted in the exercise of their Religion doing it privately without Scandal nor be vext with any oaths in order to the same What rested but a closing of both Parties Yet all would not do for the Spaniard never intended the Match at all as is evident by a Letter of the King of Spain's written to his Favourite the Conde of Olivares dated the Fifth of November 1622. found among the Lord Cottington's Papers THe King my Father declared at his Death That his intent never was to marry my Sister the Infanta Donna Maria with the Prince of Wales which your Unkle Don Baltazer understood and so treated this Match ever with intention to delay it notwithstanding it is now so far advanced that considering all the aversness of the Infanta to it it is time to seek some means to divert the Treaty
perfection in his excellent and incomparable History but when Liberty turned it to Action it taught him to roam so as the event proved fatal to him This Conspiracy put on such a face that few or none could discover or know what to make of it That the muddy waters were stirr'd was apparent but it was with such a mixture that little could be visible in it The Lord Grey Cobham and Sir Walter Rawleigh were Protestants why should they strive to alter Religion though the Priests Markham Bainham and others might But it seems they joyned together in a Politick way every one intending his own ends Discontent being the Ground-work upon which they built this slight Superstructure A great mischiefe intended to the Kings Majestie at his first entrance into the Kingdome of England before his Coronation Watson Clark Priests administring Oaths of secresie and applanding the project It came to nothing by Gods mercy The Kings Majesties clemency towards the Conspiratours after judgment past upon them No treason in England attempted but had a Romish Priest in the practise Watson Seducing Noblemen that being hudled together could not stand long Rawleigh's greatest Accuser was a Letter of Cobhams which some say after he denyed to be his hand Some of the Conspirators it may be desired to seem formidable venting their Anger so for being slighted others strove to make themselves so that they might have the glory of enlarging the Roman Power and they joyned together thinking their single strength would not prevail In this Cloud looking for Iuno they begot a Monster which having neither head nor foot some part lived the other dyed While these were provoked with Neglects others were incouraged with Favours Many of the Gentry that came out of Scotland with the King were advanced to Honours as well as those he found here to shew the Northern soyl as fruitful that way as the Southern But Knights swarmed in every corner the Sword ranged about and men bowed in obedience to it more in Peace than in War this Airy Title blew up many a fair Estate The Scots naturally by long converse affecting the French Vanity drew on a Garb of Gallantry meeting with a plentiful soyl and an open-handed Prince The English excellent for imitation loth to be exceeded in their own Country maintained their follies at their own charge All this came accompanied with a great Plague which hapned this year in London whereof above thirty thousand dyed Yet who will not venture for a Crown For in the heat of it on the five and twentieth of Iuly being the day dedicated to Saint Iames the King with his Wife Queen Anne were both crowned at Westminster fulfilling that old Prophecy or rather Fancy current among the Scots as they report before Edward the first brought the Royal Chair out of Scotland with the Stone in it and placed it at Westminster to Crown our Kings in Which Stone some old Saws deliver to be the same that Iacob rested his head on Ni fallat Fatum Scoti hunc quocunque locatum Inveniunt lapidem Regnare tenentur ibidem Englished Fate hath design'd That wheresoe'r this Stone The Scots shall find There they shall hold the Throne But how the Stream of Time runs through the Chanel of these Prophetical Fancies experience shews For 't is true if the Scots came so near the Throne as to enjoy the Stone or Chair where the English Kings are Inaugurated they may hold the Crown But being only grounded upon Conjecture these Conceits are commonly made up before they are half moulded or like Abortives are shaped after they are born When these Ceremonies were past the King retired from this croud of Infection gave some admission to Ambassadors that from all the neighbouring Princes and States came to congratulate his happy Inauguration For besides the ordinary Ceremony among Princes their Reason might tell them that if his Predecessors were able to graple with the growing Monarchy of him that coveted to be Vniversal and to assist and relieve her Neighbours and Confederates from his oppression He would be much more formidable bringing with him if nothing else Bodies of men Warlike and industrious hardned with cold and labour and active in the difficultest attempts however of late by what Divine Judgment I know not utterly disheartned to be Helpers who were formerly Hinderers to all the English Expeditions so that in him they courted their own Conveniences For certainly if ever the English Monarchy were in its true Glory and Greatness it was by this Union But there is a Period set to all Empires The Prince a little before this was installed Knight of the Garter the Earl of Southampton and the young Earl of Essex were restored to the right of Blood and Inheritance and Honours were conferred so thick as if the King intended a new kind of Conquest by a proceeding that tended to their and his own Ruin For to subdue the greatness of the Nobility who formerly could sweep such a Party of People to them with their long trains and dependencies that they were able to graple with Kings He by a multiplicity of them made them cheap and invalid in the Vulgar opinion For nothing is more destructive to Monarchy than lessening the Nobility upon their decline the Commons rise and Anarchy increases HONORAT Do CAROL BLVNT CO DEVON BA R MOVNTIOY The RIght honourable CHARLES BLVNT Earle of Deuon Baron Mountioy and Knight of the Garter As the Papist was different from the Protestant Religion on one side so was the Puritan as they then called pious and good men on the other both which were active to attain their own ends and the King had the command of himself not bitterly to oppose but gently to sweeten their hopes for His thinking himself unsecure betwixt them The latter were now solicitous for a more clear Reformation This the Bishops opposed as trenching too much upon them and the King listen'd to having experience of it in Scotland how much it had incroached upon Him For He thought their dissenting from the established Government of the Church was but to get that Power into a great many mens hands which was now but in one and that one had dependance upon him with whom He might better grapple The Prelates distilling this Maxim into the King No Bishop no Monarch so strengthning the Miter by the same Power that upholds the Crown Yet to satisfie the importunity a Conference is appointed at Hampton-Court where the Bishops Opponents Doctor Reynolds Doctor Sparks Mr. Knewstubs and Mr. Chadderton men eminent in Learning and Piety in themselves as well as in the opinion of the people did desire in the name of the rest of their party That the Doctrine of the Church might be preserved in Purity That good and faithful Pastors might be planted in all Churches That Church-Government might be sincerely administred That the Book of Common-Prayer might be fitted to more increase of Godliness Out
of some of these Particulars they insisted upon the Bishops power of Confirmation which they would have every Minister capable of in his own Parish They disputed against the Cross in Baptism the Ring in Marriage the Surplice the Oath ex officio and other things that stuck with them which they hoped to get all purged away because the King was of a Northern constitution where no such things were practised not yet having felt the Kings pulse whom the Southern Air of the Bishops breaths had so wrought upon that He himself answers most of their Demands Sometimes gently applying Lenitives where he found Ingenuity for he was Learned and Eloquent other times Corrosives telling them these Oppositions proceeded more from stubborness in Opinion than tenderness of Conscience and so betwixt his Arguments and Kingly Authority menaced them to a Conformity which proved a way of Silencing them for the present and some of them were content to acquiesce for the future and the King managed this Discourse with such power which they expected not from him and therefore more danted at That Whitgift Arch. Bishop of Canterbury though a holy grave and pious man highly pleased with it with a sugred bait which Princes are apt enough to swallow said He was verily perswaded that the King spake by the Spirit of God This Conference was on the fourteenth of Ianuary and this good man expired the nine and twentieth of February following in David's fulness of days leaving a Name like a sweet perfume behind him And Bancroft a sturdy piece succeeded him but not with the same Spirit for what Whitgift strove to do by Sweetness and Gentleness Bancroft did persevere in with Rigour and Severity Thus the Bishops having gotten the Victory strove to maintain it and though not on the suddain yet by degrees they press so hard upon the Non-conformists whom they held under the yoke of a Law that many of them are forced to seek Foreign Refuge They prevailed not only for themselves here but by their means not long after the King looked back into Scotland and put the Keys there again into the Bishops hands unlocking the passage to the enjoyment of their Temporal Estates which swel'd them so high that in his Sons time the Women of Scotland pulled them out of their tottering seats On the other side the late Conspiracy of Cobham and Grey had so chilled the Kings blood that he begins to take notice of the swarms of Priests that flockt into the Kingdom For though the Conspirators were of several Religions yet in their correspondence with Foreign Princes Religion was the pretence For in every alteration of Kingdoms few are so modest but they will throw in the Hook of their vain Hopes thinking to get something in the troubled Stream The Iesuits were not slack coming with the Seal of the Fisher in spreading their Nets but a Proclamation broke through them The King being contented to let them alone till they came too near him willing to comply rather than exasperate the safety of his own person made him look to the safety of Religion and to secure both He found this the best Remedy Declaring to all the World the cause of this Restriction VINVIT QVI PATITVR OBIIT ANNO AETATIS SVAE 73 Having after some time spent in setling the Politick affairs of this Realm of late bestowed no small labour in composing certain Differences We found among Our Clergy about Rites and Ceremonies heretofore established in this Church of England and reduced the same to such an order and form as We doubt not but every spirit that is led only with piety and not with humour should be therein satisfied It appeared unto Us in debating these Matters that a greater Contagion to Our Religion than could proceed from these light differences was eminent by persons common Enemies to them both namely the great numbers of Priests both Seminaries and Iesuits abounding in this Realm as well of such as were here before Our coming to the Crown as of such as have resorted hither since using their Functions and Professions with greater liberty than heretofore they durst have done partly upon a vain confidence of some Innovation in matters of Religion to be done by Us which We never intended nor gave any man cause to suspect and partly from the assurance of Our general Pardon granted according to the Custom of Our Progenitors at Our Coronation for offences past in the days of the late Queen which Pardon 's many of the said Priests have procured under Our Great Seal and holding themselves thereby free from danger of the Laws do with great audacity exercise all offices of their Profession both saying Masses and perswading Our Subjects from the Religion established reconciling them to the Church of Rome and by consequence seducing them from their Duty and Obedience to Us. Wherefore We hold Our self obliged both in Consequence and Wisdom to use all good means to keep Our Subjects from being affected with superstitious Opinions which are not only pernicious to their own souls but the ready way to corrupt their Duty and Allegiance which cannot be any way so safely performed as by keeping from them the Instruments of that infection which are Priests of all sorts ordained in Foreign parts by Authority prohibited by the Laws of the Land concerning whom therefore We have thought fit to publish to all Our Subjects this open Declaration of Our pleasure c. Willing and Commanding all manner of Iesuits Seminaries and other Priests whatsoever having Ordination from any Authority by the Laws of this Realm prohibited to take notice that Our pleasure is that they do before the nineteenth of March next depart forth of Our Realm and Dominions And to that purpose it shall be lawful for all Officers of Our Ports to suffer the said Priests to depart into Foreign parts between this and said nineteenth day of March Admonishing and assuring all such Iesuits Seminaries and Priests of what sort soever that if any of them after the said time shall be taken within this Realm or any of Our Dominions or departing now upon this Our pleasure signified shall hereafter return into this Our Realm or any of Our Dominions again they shall be left to the penalty of the Laws here being in force concerning them without hope of any favour or remission from Us c. Which though perhaps it may appear to some a great severity towards that sort of Our Subjects yet doubt We not when it shall be considered with indifferent judgment what cause hath moved Us to use this Providence all men will justifie Us therein For to whom is it unknown into what peril Our Person was like to be drawn and Our Realm unto Confusion not many Months since by Conspiracy First conceived by persons of that sort Which when other Princes shall duly observe We assure Our selves they will no way conceive that this alteration proceedeth from any change of disposition but out of
providence to prevent the perils otherwise inevitable Considering their absolute submission to Foreign Iurisdiction at their first taking Orders doth leave so conditional an authority to Kings over their Subjects as the same Power by which they were made may dispense at pleasure with the strictest Bond of Loyalty and Love between a King his People Among which Foreign Powers though We acknowledg Our self personally so much beholden to the now Bishop of Rome for his kind Offices and private temporal Carriages towards Us in many things as We shall be ever ready to requite the same towards him as Bishop of Rome in state and condition of a Secular Prince Yet when we consider and observe the course and Clame of that See We have no reason to imagine that Princes of Our Religion and Profession can expect any assurance long to continue unless it might be assented by mediation of other Christian Princes that some good course might be taken by a general Council free and lawfully called to pluck up those Roots of Dangers and Iealousies which arise about Religion as well between Prince and Prince as between them and their Subjects and to make it manifest that no State or Potentate either hath or can challenge power to dispose of earthly Kingdoms or Monarchies or to dispense with Subjects obedience to their natural Soveraigns In which charitable Action there is no Prince living that will be readier than We shall be to concur even to the uttermost of Our Power not only out of particular disposition to live peaceably with all States and Princes of Christendom but because such a setled Amity might by an Union in Religion be established among Christian Princes as might enable Us all to resist the common Enemy Given at Our Palace at Westminster the two and twentieth day of February in the first year of Our Reign c. This did something allay the heat and hopes of the Iesuits and their correspondents but it made way for dark and more secret Contrivances which afterwards they put in practice On the contrary another Proclamation came out for Vniformity in Religion according to the Law established to reduce those to Conformity that had not received satisfaction at the last Conference The Bishops thought themselves unsecure while so many opposites unblameable in their conversations by their Pens and Preaching gained upon the people striking at the very Root of Hierarchy that it was a hard Question whether the Iesuits whose Principles would advance their Greatness or these that would pluck it down were most odious to them And now Proclamations are the activest Agents some go abroad to please the people some the King All Monopolies like diseases that crept in when the good old Queen had not strength enough to keep them out must be purged away and such protections as licentious liberty had granted to hinder proceedings in Law must be taken off Saltpeter-men that will dig up any mans house by authority where they are not well fee'd must be restrained and Purveyors Cart-takers and such insolent Officers as were grievances to the people must be cryed down by Proclamation A Prince that is invited or comes newly to a Kingdom must have his Chariot wheels smooth shod And yet the liberty of Hunting must be forbidden the Kings Game preserved and a strict Proclamation threatens the disobeyers Indeed take this Kings Reign from the beginning to the end and you shall find Proclamations current Coin and the people took them for good payment a great while till the multitude of them lessened their valuation The Bishops could not be so wary but some Courtier or other would commend a Preacher to the King if they knew any of excellent parts so that some preached before him that were averse to the Bishops ways Among the rest one Mr. Burges an excellent Preacher and a pious man moderately touching upon the Ceremonies said They were like the Roman Senators Glasses which were not worth a mans life or livelihood For saith he this Senator invited Augustus Caesar to a Dinner and as he was coming to the Feast he heard a horrid Out-cry and saw some company drawing a man after them that made that noise the Emperor demanded the cause of that violence it was answered their Master had condemned this man to the Fish-ponds for breaking a Glass which he set a high value and esteem upon Caesar commanded a stay of the Execution and when he came to the House he asked the Senator whether he had Glasses worth a mans life Who answered being a great lover of such things that he had Glasses he valued at the price of a Province Let me see them saith Augustus and he brought him up to a room well furnished The Emperor saw them beautiful to the eye but knew withal they might be the cause of much mischief therefore he broke them all with this expression Better all these perish than one man I will leave it saith he to your Majesty to apply But the Bishops got this and some other things against him by the end and silenced him for venting any more such comparisons So that for many years after he practised Physick and grew an excellent Physician Put upon second considerations he was admitted again to Preach retaining both his Piety and Integrity though he writ a book for the moderate use of the Ceremonies ending his days in a good old age at Sutton Cofeld in Warwick-shire after a journey into the Palatinate as shall be exprest in its time The fifth of August this year had a new title given to it The Kings Deliveries in the North must resound here Whether the Gowries attempted upon the Kings person or the King on theirs is variously reported It may be he retained something of his Predecessor and great Parent Henry the seventh that made Religion give way to Policy oftentimes cursing and thundring out the Churches fulminations against his own Ministers that they might be received with the more intimate familiarity with his Foreign Enemies for the better discovery of their designs I will not say the celebration of this Holy-day had so much Prophaneness for Fame may be a slanderer But where there is a strength of Policy there is often a power of worldly wisdom that manages and sways it The King forgot not the services there done him or the secret contrivances acted for him for Erskin and Ramsey two of his then deliverers were not long after rewarded with wealth and honour the one made Earl of Kellie the other Earl of Holderness the first prime Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber to the King and second got to his Bedfellow one of the prime Beauties of the Kingdom daughter to Robert Earl of Sussex and both of them had their Masters purse at command yet in our time the one died poor with many children the other poor and childless The Kings first going abroad was privately to visit some of his houses for naturally he did not love to be looked on
That Place is no Place for you to utter your Affections in you must not there hate your foe nor love your friend fear the offending of the greater party or pity the misery of the meaner ye must be blind and not see distinctions of Persons handless not to receive Bribes but keep that just Temper and Medium in all your Proceedings that like a just Ballance ye may neither sway to the right hand nor to the left Three principal Qualities are required in you Knowledg Courage and Sincerity that you may discern with Knowledg execute with Courage and do both in upright Sincerity And for my part I do vow and protest here in the presence of God and of this Honourable Audience I never shall be weary nor omit occasion wherein I may shew my carefulness of the Execution of good Laws And as I wish you that are Iudges not to be weary in your Office in doing of it so shall I never be weary with Gods grace to take account of you which is properly my calling And thus having told you the three causes of my Convening of this Parliament all three tending only to utter my thankfulness but in divers forms the first by word the other two by action I do confess that when I have done and performed all that in this Speech I have promised Inutilis servus sum When I have done all that I can for you I do nothing but that which I am bound to do and am accountable to God for the contrary For the difference betwixt a Rightful King and an Usurping Tyrant is this That the proud and ambitious Tyrant doth think his Kingdom and People are ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetite The righteous and just King doth by the contrary acknowledg himself to be ordained for procuring the wealth and prosperity of his People and that his greatest and principal worldly felicity must consist in their prosperity If you be rich I cannot be poor if you be happy I cannot but be fortunate and I protest that your welfare shall ever be my greatest care and contentment And that I am a Servant is most true that as I am a Head and Governour of all the People in my Dominions who are my Natural Vassals and Subjects considering them in numbers and distinct ranks So if we will take the People as one Body and Mass then as the Head is ordained for the Body and not the Body for the Head so must a righteous King know himself to be ordained for his People and not his People for Him For although a King and his People be Relata yet can he be no King if he want People and Subjects But there be many People in the World that lack a Head wherefore I will never be ashamed to confess it my Principal Honour to be the great Servant of the Common-wealth and ever think the Prosperity thereof to be my greatest felicity as I have already said But as it was the whole Body of this Kingdom with an uniform assent and harmony which did so far oblige me so is my thankfulness due to the whole State For even as in Matter of faults Quod à multis peccatur impunè peccatur even so in the Matter of virtuous and good deeds which are done by the willing Consent and Harmony of the whole Body no particular Person can justly claim thanks as proper to him for the same And therefore I must here make a little Apologie for my self in that I could not satisfie the particular humours of every Person that looked for some Advancement or Reward at my hand since my entry into this Kingdom Three kinds of things were craved of me Advancement to honour Preferment to place of Credit about my Person and Reward in Matters of Land or Profit If I had bestowed Honour upon all no man could have been advanced to Honour for the Degrees of Honour do consist in preferring some above their Fellows If every man had the like access to my Person then no man could have it and if I had bestowed Lands and Rewards upon every man the Fountain of my Liberality would have been so exhausted as I should want Means to be liberal to any man Yet was I not so sparing but I may without Vaunting affirm that I have enlarged my favour in all the three Degrees towards as many and more than ever King of England did in so short a space No I rather crave your pardon that I have been so bountiful For if the means of the Crown be wasted whither should I have recourse but to you my Subjects and be burthensome to you which I should be lothest to do of any King alive Two special Causes moved me to be so open-handed whereof the one was reasonable and honourable but the other I will not be ashamed to confess unto you proceeded of my own infirmity That which was Just and Honourable was that being so far beholden to the Body of the whole State I thought I could not refuse to let some small Brooks run out of the Fountain of my Thankfulness to the whole for refreshing of particular Persons that were Members of that Multitude The other which proceeded out of mine own Infirmity was the Multitude and importunity of Suters But although Reason come by infusion in a manner yet Experience groweth with time and labour And therefore do I not doubt but Experience will teach the particular Subjects of this Kingdom not to be so importune and undiscreet in craving and Me not to be so easily and lightly moved in granting that which may be harmful to my Estate and consequently to the whole Kingdom And thus at length having declared unto you my mind My Conclusion shall only now be to excuse my Self in case you have not found such Eloquence in my Speech as peradventure you might have looked for at my hands I might alledg the great weight of my Affairs and my continual business and distraction that I could never have leisure to think upon what I was to speak And I might also alledg that my first sight of this so Famous and Honourable an Assembly might likewise breed some impediment But leaving these excuses I will plainly and freely in my manner tell you the true Cause of it which is That it becometh a King in my opinion to use no other Eloquence than plainness and sincerity By plainness I mean that his Speeches should be so clear and void of all ambiguity that they may not be thrown nor rent in sunder in contrary senses like the old Oracles of the Pagan gods And by Sincerity I understand that uprightness and honesty which ought to be in a Kings whole Speeches and Actions that as far as a King is in Honour erected above any of his Subjects so far should he strive in Sincerity to be above them all and that his tongue should be ever the true Messenger of his heart And this sort of Eloquence you may ever assuredly look
for at my hands Thus the Beams of Majesty had an influence upon every branch and leaf of the Kingdom by reflecting upon the Root their Representative Body every particular expecting what fruit this Sun-shine would produce striving as much to insinuate into him as he did into the general so that there was a Reciprocal Harmony between the King and the People because they courted one another But when the Kings Bounty contracted it self into private Favourites as it did afterwards bestowing the affection he promised the whole people upon one man when the golden showers they gaped for dropt into some few chanels their passions flew higher than their hopes The Kings aims were to unite the two Kingdoms so that the one might corroborate the other to make good that part of his Speech by this intermixtion wherein he divides England and Scotland into halves But the English stumbled at that partition thinking it an unequal division and fearing that the Scots creeping into English Lordships and English Ladies Beds in both which already they began to be active might quickly make their least half the predominant part But he was Proclaimed King of Great Britain England must be no more a Name the Scotish Coyns are made currant and our Ships must have Saint Georges and Saint Andrews Crosses quartered together in their Flags all outward Ensigns of Amity But those English that had suckt in none of the sweets of this pleasant Stream of Bounty repined to see the Scots advanced from blew Bonnets to costly Beavers wearing instead of Wadmeal Velvet and Satin as divers Pasquils written in that Age Satyrically taunted at Which is not set down here to vilifie the Scots being most of them Gentlemen that had deserved well of their Master but to shew how cross to the publick Appetite the Hony-comb is that another man eats But the King like a wise Pilot guided the Helm with so even an hand that these small gusts were not felt It behoved him to play his Master-prize in the Beginning which he did to the life for he had divers opinions humours and affections to grapple with as well as Nations and 't is a very calm Sea when no billow rises The Romanists bogled that he said in his Speech They were unsufferable in the Kingdom as long as they maintained the Pope to be their Spiritual Head and He to have power to dethrone Princes The Separatists as the King called them were offended at that Expression wherein he professed willingly if the Papists would lay down King-killing and some other gross errors he would be content to meet them half way So that every one grounded his hopes or his fears upon the shallows of his own fancy not knowng yet what course the King would steer But these sores being tenderly dealt with did not suddenly fester but were skinned over The King desirous of the Title Pacificus did not only close with his own Subjects but healed up also that old wound that had bled long in the sides of England and Spain both being weary of the pain both willing to be cured The King of Spain sent the Constable of Castile with a mighty Train of smooth-handed Spaniards to close up the wound on this side where the old Enmity being well mortified they were received with singular Respect and Civility The King of England sent his High Admiral the Earl of Notingham with as splendid a Retinue of English to close it on that Who being Personages of Quality accoutred with all Ornaments suitable were the more admired by the Spaniards for beauty and excellency by how much the Iesuits had made impressions in the vulgar opinion That since the English left the Roman Religion they were transformed into strange horrid shapes with Heads and Tails like Beasts and Monsters So easie it is for those Iuglers when they have once bound up the Conscience to tye up the Vnderstanding also EARL OF NOTTINGHAM GEORGE CAREW EARL OF TOTNES And to satisfie the Kings desires about an Vnion betwixt England and Scotland the Parliament made an Act to authorise certain Commissioners viz. Thomas Lord Ellesmere Lord Chancellor of England Thomas Earl of Dorset Lord Treasurer of England Charles Earl of Notingham Lord High Admiral of England Henry Earl of Southampton William Earl of Pembroke Henry Earl of Northampton Richard Bishop of London Tobie Bishop of Duresme Anthony Bishop of Saint Davids Robert Lord Cecil Principal Secretary Edward Lord Zouch Lord President of Wales William Lord Mounteagle Ralph Lord Eure Edmund Lord Sheffeild Lord President of the Council in the North Lords of the Higher House of Parliament And Thomas Lord Clinton Robert Lord Buckhurst Sir Francis Hastings Knight Sir Iohn Stanhope Knight Vice-Chamberlain to his Majesty Sir Iohn Herbert Knight second Secretary to his Majesty Sir George Carew Knight Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen Sir Thomas Strickland Knight Sir Edward Stafford Knight Sir Henry Nevill of Berk-shire Knight Sir Richard Bukley Knight Sir Henry Billingsley Knight Sir Daniel Dun Knight Dean of the Arches Sir Edward Hobby Knight Sir Iohn Savile Knight Sir Robert Wroth Knight Sir Thomas Chaloner Knight Sir Robert Maunsel Knight Sir Thomas Ridgeway Knight Sir Thomas Holcroft Knight Sir Thomas Hesketh Knight Atturney of the Court of Wards Sir Francis Bacon Knight Sir Lawrence Tanfield Knight Serjeant at Law Sir Henry Hubberd Knight Serjeant at Law Sir Iohn Bennet Doctor of the Laws Sir Henry Withrington Sir Ralph Grey and Sir Thomas Lake Knights Robert Askwith Thomas Iames and Henry Chapman Merchants Knights Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons or any eight of the said Lords and twenty of the said Commons Which Commissioners shall have power to assemble meet treat and consult with certain select Commissioners to be nominated and authorised by Authority of the Parliament of Scotland concerning such Matters Causes and things as they in their Wisdoms shall think and deem convenient and necessary for the honour of the King and common good of both Kingdoms Yet the good intentions of this Vnion took no effect as will follow in the sequel of this History But there were a great many good Laws made which are too voluminous for this place having a proper Sphere of their own to move in Thus the King sate triumphing as it were upon a Throne of his Peoples Affections and his beginnings had some settlement for being loth to be troubled he sought Peace every-where But our inbred distempers lay upon the Lee intermixt with other gross dregs that the Princes lenity and the Peoples luxury produced For the King minding his sports many riotous demeanours crept into the Kingdom the Sun-shine of Peace being apt for such a production upon the slime of the late War The Sword and Buckler trade being now out of date one corruption producing another the City of London being always a fit Receptacle for such whose prodigalities and wastes made them Instruments of Debaucheries divers Sects of vitious Persons going under the
Boutefeus for so desperate an Enterprize was notwithstanding father'd upon the Puritans as Nero did the burning of Rome upon the Christians by some impudent and cunning Iesuits whose practice is to deceive if not quite to clear their party yet by stirring this muddy water to make that which is in it to appear the less perspicuous and it is like the rest of their Figments fit baits for Ignorance to nibble on Which some years after I had opportunity at Bruges in Flanders to make Weston an old Iesuit active in the Powder-plot ingenuously to confess This preceded the second Sessions of the first Parliament prorogued till the fifth of November and upon the ninth they met where with Hearts full of Fears and Jealousies they ripped up the ground of the Machination for discovery of the Complotters and laid such a Foundation of good Laws against Papists as might serve for a Bulwark in the time to come The King was not unmindful of the Lord Monteagle the first Discoverer of this Treason for he gave to him and his Heirs for ever two hundred pounds a year in Fee-farm Rents and five hundred pounds a year besides during his life as a reward for this good service Si quid patimini propter iustitiam beati i petriâ— Henricus Garnetus anglus e societate IESV passus 3 May 1606 Henry Lord Mordant and Edward Lord Stuâ—ton not coming to the Parliament according to their Writ of Summons were suspected to have knowledg of the Conspiracy and so was the Earl of Northumberland from some presumptions and all three were committed to the Tower The two Barons after some imprisonment were redeemed by Fine in Star-chamber but the Earl continued a Prisoner there for many years after In Iuly this year the King of Denmark Brother to the Queen came in Person as a visitor where he found their Shakings somewhat setled their Terrors abated and met with not only all those varieties that Riches Power and Plenty are capable to produce for satisfaction where will and affection are the dispensers but he beheld with admiration the stately Theatre whereon the Danes for many hundred of years had acted their bloody parts But how he resented their Exit or the last Act of that black Tragaedy wherein his Country lost their interest some Divine Power that searches the capacious hearts of Princes can only discover This short Month of his stay carryed with it as pleasing a countenance on every side and of their Recreations and Pastimes flew as high a flight as Love mounted upon the wings of art and fancy the sutable nature of the season or Times swift foot could possibly arrive at The Court City and some parts of the Country with Banquetings Masks Dancings Tilting Barriers and other Gallantry besides the manly Sports of Wrestling and the brutish Sports of bayting Wild-beasts swelled to such a greatness as if there were an intention in every particular man this way to have blown up himself The seven and twentieth of May last the Parliament was prorogued to the eighteenth of November following but before they parted having hearts full of affection for Gods great deliverance of the whole Kingdom from ruin and destruction they made an Act to have the fifth of November for ever solemnized with publick Thanksgiving Imputing the Discovery of the Treason to Gods inspiring the King with a Divine Spirit to interpret some dark phrases of the Letter above and beyond all ordinary construction They attainted the blood of those Traitors that were Executed as also those that were slain in the field or dyed in Prison They made many good Laws for the discovering and suppressing of Popish Recusants And gave the King three intire Subsidies and six Fifteens Besides four Subsidies of four shillings in the pound granted by the Clergy But they put off the Treaty of Vnion by an Act that referred it to be done as well any other Session of Parliament so willing they were to keep close to the Kings affections and not to start from him But the next Session the King being loth to be longer delayed the business of the Vnion was much pressed again by some that knew the Kings mind among whom Sir Francis Bacon now the Kings Solicitor was a principal Instrument who came prepared for it and first moved the House of Commons that the Scots might be Naturalized by Act of Parliament which was opposed by divers strong and modest Arguments Among which they brought in the comparison of Abraham and Lot whose Families joyning they grew to difference and to those words Vade tu ad dextram ego ad sinistram It was answered That Speech brought the captivity of the one they having dis-joyned their strength The Party opposing said If we admit them into our Liberties we shall be over-run with them as Cattle naturally pent up by a slight Hedg will over it into a better soyl and a Tree taken from a barren place will thrive to excessive and exuberant Branches in a better witness the multiplicities of the Scots in Polonia To which it was answer'd That if they had not means place custom and imployment not like Beasts but Men they would starve in a plentiful soyl though they came into it and what spring-tide and confluence of that Nation have housed and familied themselves among us these four years of the Kings reign And they will never live so meanly here as they do in Polonia for they had rather discover their poverty abroad than at home Besides there is a question whether England be fully peopled witness the drowned Grounds and Common-wasts the ruins and decays of ancient Towns in this Realm Witness how many serve in the Parliament for desolate Burroughs Witness our Wasts by Sea as well as by Land suffering the Flemings to carry away all our Fishing the sinews of our industry being slackned we want active spirits to corroborate them by their example Besides the planting Ireland fully abounding with Rivers Havens Woods Quarries good Soyl and temperate Climate No surcharge of people hath been prejudicial to Countreys the worst will be an honourable War to recover our ancient Rights or revenge our Injuries or to attain to the honour of our Ancestors We should not forget the consideration of Amplitude and Greatness and fall at variance about Profit and Recknings fitter for private persons than Kingdoms The other side objected That the Fundamental Laws of both Kingdoms are divers and it is declared they shall so continue and therefore it would not be reasonable to proceed to this Naturalization whereby to indow them with our Rights except they should receive and submit to our Laws EdwardusI DG Rex Ang Dux Aqui ete Dom Hib sould by Robt Peake It was answered That in the Administration of the World under God the great Monarch his Laws are divers one Law in Spirits another in Bodies one Law in Regions Celestial another in Elementary and yet the Creatures are all one mass
or lump That in the state of the Church among People of several languages and lineages there is a Communion of Saints and we are all fellow-Citizens and Naturalizants of the Heavenly Ierusalem and yet divers Ecclesiastical Laws Policies and Hierarchies for the Laws are rather Figura Republicae than Forma rather bonds of Perfection than Intireness That in Ireland Iersey Gâ—rnsey and the Isle of Man our Common Laws are not in force and yet they have the benefit of Naturalization To which it was replyed that these are only Flourishes of Rhetorick for God who is the only Disposer of all his Creatures keeps them in Order and Obedience to Him by a Law which they cannot deviate from unless he withdraws his preserving Hand from them But betwixt Man and Man or Realm and Realm there can be no such Tie or Obligation to hold an Vnity where they have various Laws and various Priviledges And for the immunities given to the Irish for some Ages past they were English Colonies sent there to plant being a great part of them Natives with us of the same blood and stock with whom we are ingrafted by Time and made as it were one Body the better to secure their obedience and hinder any League or Amity with a Foreign Nation But Scotland hath an intire Vnion with the French continued for some hundreds of years that is indissolvable and therefore incompetent yet to the freedoms of England When we have had as much experience of the Friendship of Scotland as of them we shall incline to a more intimate Vnion Besides there is an inequality in the Portunes of the two Nations and by this Commixture there may ensue advantage to them and loss to us To the latter part was answered Beatius est dare quà m accipere And Edward the First among other Commendations of War and Policy none was more celebrated than his purpose and enterprize for the Conquest of Scotland as not bending his Designs to glorious Acquests abroad but solid strength at home which if it had succeded could not but have brought in those inconveniences of the Commixture of a more opulent Kingdom with a less for it is not the yoke either of Laws or Arms that can alter the nature of the Climate or the nature of the Soil neither is it the manner of the Commixture that can alter the nature of the Commixture and therefore if it were good for us then it is good for us now and not to be prized the less because we paid not so dear for it They strive further to prove That the benefit of Naturalization is by Law to as many as have been or shall be born since the Kings coming to the Crown for there is no more than to bring the Ante-nati unto the degree of Post-nati that Men grown may be in no worse case than Children and elder Brothers in no worse condition than younger Brothers That if any object the Law is not so but that the Post-nati are Aliens as the rest it is contrary to the Reason of Law The Wisdom of the Common Laws of England is admirable in distribution of the Benefit and Perfection of the Law according to the several conditions of Persons The Degrees are four two of Aliens and two of Subjects The first Degree is of an Alien born under a King or State that is an Enemy if such an one come into the Kingdom without safe conduct it is at his peril the Law giveth him no protection neither of Body Lands nor Goods so as if he be slain there is no remedy by any appeal at the Parties sute though she were an English Woman though at the Kings sute the Case may be otherwise in regard of the offence to the Peace and Crown The second Degree is of an Alien that is born under Faith and Allegiance of a King or State that is a Friend unto such a Person the Law doth impart a greater benefit and protection concerning things personal transitory and moveable as Goods and Chattels Contracts and the like but not concerning Free-hold and Inheritance and the Reason is because he may be an Enemy though he be not for the State where he was born may enter into Hostility and therefore as the Law hath but a Transitory assurance of him so it rewards him with Transitory benefits The third Degree is of a Subject who having been an Alien is made free by Charter and Denization To such a one the Law doth impart yet a more ample benefit for it gives him a power to purchase Free-hold and Inheritance to his own use and likewise inables his Children born after his Denization to inherit But yet he cannot make Title or convey any Pedigree from any Ancestour Paramount for the Law thinks not good to make him in the same Degree with a Subject born because he was once an Alien and so might have been an Enemy and Affections cannot be so setled by any benefit as when from their Nativity they are inbred and inherent The fourth Degree and the perfect Degree is of such a Person as neither is Enemy nor can be Enemy in time to come nor would have been Enemy at any time past and therefore the Law gives unto him the full benefit of Naturalization Now if these be the true steps and paces of the Law no man can deny but whosoever is born under the Kings obedience never could in aliquo puncto temporis be an Enemy and therefore in reason of Law is Naturalized So though the Scots seem to be in Reason Naturales ipso jure yet it is not superfluous to have it done by Parliament for it will shew the World our love to them and good agreement with them Then they shewed by authority of History and Experience the Inconveniencies that may grow if this Vnion of Naturalization doth not close and bind up the Veins so as to make it one perfect Body For else it may be apt to open and break out again upon all occasions and relapse to the detriment of both Ripping up ancient Stories of the Romans and Latines and the Wars they had meerly for want of this Vnion and never were at quiet till they injoyed it Then between the Peloponnesians and the Spartans the like And from ancient Stories to the Kingdom of Arragon and Castile united in the Persons of Ferdinando and Isabella severed and divided from the rest of Spain in Priviledges and directly in this point of Naturalization or capacity of Inheritance But what came of this A Rebellion grew among them which a Royal Army with difficulty suppressed and they being made one incorporated Body with the rest of Spain perpetuated Peace to Posterity The like example was betwixt Florence and Pisa. And whatsoever Kingdoms and States have been United and that Vnion corroborated by the Bonds of Naturalization you shall never observe them afterward upon any occasion to break or sever again Whereof divers Provinces in France by time annexed to that Crown are
further witnesses So that except they proceed to this Naturalization these Realms will be in continual danger to divide and break again Next they shew the Benefits to be Security and Greatness Surety by stopping up the Postern-gates of our Enemies so that we shall not be so much a temptation to the ambition of Foreigners when their Approaches and Avenues are taken away For having so little success when they had these advantages they will have less comfort when they want them And Greatness by this Vnion must needs follow For having so many Iron-handed men in these three Kingdoms we shall not only pluck Gold from the once poor Spaniards Indian-mines but by our Arms keep in awe the whole Christian World These Arguments prest with gilded Oratory by the Solicitor and his partakers could not prevail though urged with all the power Wit could invent or Hope aim at For being new budded in Court he was one of those that smoothed his way to a full ripeness by liquâ—rish and pleasing passages which he at last attained to being made Lord Chancellor of England But such sweets though delightful at present breed rottenness in the end for he withered and came to nothing as in due time shall be expressed But the King like a great Sea being troubled when such cross-winds are boistrous sent for both Houses of Parliament to White-hall hall the last of March 1607. to calm them where betwixt a Sun-shine of fair Words and a Cloud of Anger he colours over some of the Arguments that had been used and urges others for his best advantage with a plain natural bluntness fit for Kings He tells them the Vnion he desires is of Laws and Persons such a Naturalizing as may make one Body of both Kingdoms that as there is but Vnus Rex so there may be but Vnus Grex Vna Lex His intention is not as some idly alledg to give England the labour and sweat and Scotland the fruit and sweet vainly talking of transplanting Trees out of barren ground into better and lean Cattle out of bad pasture into a more fertile soyl Can any man displant them unless they will Or is Scotland so strong to pull them out of their houses Whereas the waste grounds in Scotland would rather be planted by Swarms of People that cumber the Streets here First He desires that all Hostile Laws should cease being the King of England cannot make War with the King of Scotland Secondly That there should be Community of Commerce he being no Stranger but descended of their ancient Kings and how can he be Natural Liege-Lord to both and they Strangers to one another And shall they that be under the same Allegiance be no freer nor have no better Respect than Frenchmen and Spaniards Thirdly They all agree they are no Aliens and yet will not allow them to be Natural That he was informed by their own Iudges and Lawyers at his first access to the Crown that there was a difference between the Ante and Post-nati of each Kingdom which caused him to publish a Proclamation that the Post-nati were Naturalized by his accession but he confesses Iudges may err so may the Lawyer 's on their side Therefore he admonishes them to beware to disgrace either his Proclamations or the Iudges for so they may disgrace both their King and Laws who have power when the Parliament is ended to try them both for Lands and Lives And for some of them who with their flattering speeches would have the Ante-nati preferred alledging their merit in my service such Discourses have mel in ore fel in corde carrying an outward appearance of love to the Vnion but a contrary resolution in their hearts For the King would have them know it lies within the compass of his Prerogative to prefer whom he pleases to any Dignity Civil or Ecclesiastical But he is so far from prejudicing the English that he is willing to bind himself to reasonable Restrictions Besides it is a special Point of the Kings Prerogative to make Aliens Citizens and in any case wherein the Law is thought not to be clear Rex est Iudex for he is Lex loquens supplying the Law where it wants But this he speaks as knowing what belongs to a King not intending to press it further than may agree with their loves and stand with the conveniency of both Nations The inconveniences supposed to arise from Scotland are pretended to be 1. An evil affection in the Scots to the Vnion 2. That the Vnion is incompetible 3. That the Gain is small or none If this be so Why is there talk of an Vnion For the first They alledg the averseness of the Scots from the Preface and Body of their Act where they decare they will remain an absolute and free Monarchy and not alter the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom And yet in the beginning of this Session of Parliament the opinion was current that Scotland was greedy of this Vnion and pursued it with so much violence that they cared not for the strictness of the Conditions so they might attain the substance and end And yet they now say they are backwards which is a Contradiction for how can they both beg and deny the same thing at one and the same time And by preserving their Fundamental Laws they mean those Laws by which Confusion is avoided and their Kings Succession and Monarchy maintained To which he Declares That he is in descent three hundred years before Christ not meaning as they do their Common Law for the Scots have no Law but that which is Ius Regis And for their desire of continuing a free Monarchy he hopes they mean not he should set Garrisons over them as the Spaniards do over Sicily and Naples And then he tells them That he governs Scotland with his Pen he writes and doth more by a Clerk of the Council than others could do by the Sword And though he knows there are many seditious Persons in that Kingdom that may talk lewdly enough yet none of them ever spake dishonourably of England as they have done of Scotland For if any man speaks any thing uncomely there the Chancellor by his Authority interrupts him but here they have freedom to speak what they list and as long as they list without contradiction Then the King shews what the Laws of Scotland are 1. Those which concern Tenures Wards Liveries Signiories and Lands are drawn out of the Chancery of England brought by Iames the First who was bred up here and differ only in terms The second are Statute Laws to which he hopes they will be no Strangers The third is the Civil Law brought out of France by Iames the Fifth and serve only to supply in such Cases where the Municipal Laws are defective So that he hopes it is no hard matter to unite the People together who are in effect already subject to the same Law And whereas it is Objected that the King of Scotland hath not
a Negative Voice in Parliament but must pass the Laws agreed on by the Lords and Commons He assures them that the form of Parliament there is nothing inclined to Popularity For about twenty days before the Parliament begins Proclamation is made throughout the Kingdom that all Bills to be exhibited that Session be delivered to the Master of the Rolls by a certain day Then they are brought to the King perused and considered by him and only such as he allows are put into the Chancellors hand to be propounded that Parliament and no other And if any man speak of any other Matter than is in this Form first allowed by him the Chancellor tells him that there is no such Bill allowed by the King And when they are past for Laws he ratifies and confirms them first racing out what he doth not approve of And if this be to be called a Negative Voice in Parliament then he hath one For the Vnion betwixt the French and the Scots which makes this Vnion so incompetible he assures them it was a League only made between the Kings not the People For Scotland being solicited by England and France at one Time for a League Offensive and Defensive against each others Enemies There was a great Disputation maintained in favour of England that they being our Neighbours joyned in one Continent a strong and Powerful Nation it would be more Security to the State of Scotland to joyn in Amity with England than with France divided by the Sea where they must abide the hazard of wind and weather and other Accidents that might hinder relief But on the contrary it was alledged in the favour of France That England ever sought to conquer Scotland and therefore there would never be kept any sound Amity Whereas France lying more remote claimed no interest and therefore would be found a more constant and faithful Friend so it was concluded on their Part. But by the Tenour it was ordered to be renewed and confirmed from King to King successively by the mediation of their Ambassadors and therefore merely personal And so it was renewed in the Queen his Mothers time but not by assent in Parliament which it could not have wanted if it had been a League of the People And in the Kings Time when it came to be ratified because it appeared to be in Odium Tertii it was by him left un-renewed in consideration of his Title to the Crown MARIA IACOBI SCOTORVM REGIS FILIA SCOTORVMQVE NVNC REGINA HONORATISS DNê° THOMAS EGERTONUS BARO DE ELLESMER ANGLIAE CANCELLAriê° This urged with asseveration might have wrought much with the Parliament but that they apprehended a great inconvenience in such an Vnion where the Laws and Government are of different natures All were not Romans that were born subjects to the Roman Empire though St. Paul was born one the Centurion was a purchaser For notwithstanding all the former Arguments by the King and his Ministers the Parliament knew that it is true That if Scotland had been Conquered the only way to tie them to obedience were to let them taste the sweets of English Liberties But to let them sit Triumphing upon their own priviledges and roam about among the English Freedoms were to make them straggle too much The Scots would not lessen nor in the least derogate from the dignity of their long continued Monarchy and the English thought they had no reason to come to them to derogate from themselves The Parliament only feared the Kings Power would have such an influence upon the Iudges of the Kingdom that the Scots would be naturalized too soon they were resolved not to be accessary to it which indeed some two years after was confirmed in Calvins case of post-nati reported by the Lord Chief Justice Cook who was fit metal for any stamp Royal and adjudged by him the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and most of the Judges of the Kingdom in the Exchequer-Chamber though many strong and valid Arguments were brought against it such Power is in the breath of Kings and such soft stuff are Judges made of that they can vary their Precedents and model them into as many shapes as they please And thus this Case stood like a Statue cloathed by the Lord Chief Justice in the vulgar Language when the rest of his Reports spoke an unknown Tongue that the Kingdom might take more particular notice that the Scots were as free in England as themselves yet it fell not out to their wishes But all that could be gotten from the Parliament was That the Laws of hostility that were anciently made betwixt England and Scotland were repealed that the old grudges which caused the Dis-union the War in the members might be taken away And in the said Act they provided That if a natural born subject of England did commit any misdemeanour in Scotland and sly into England he should be tried where he was taken and not carried into Scotland to receive his judgment there Till such time which are the very words of the Act as both Kingdoms shall be made one in Laws and Government which is the thing so much desired as that wherein the full perfection of the blessed Vnion already begun in the Kings Royal person consisteth And further they went not For they found and feared the old enmity would yet a while continue for since the Kings coming into England the loose and uncomposed Borderers that lived upon rapine and spoil seeking new benefits from new changes had broke out and committed many insolencies who though they were suppressed by the Forces of Barwick and Carlile and many of them suffered in it yet custom and habit had bred in them a natural Ferity which could only be restrained by giving freedom to the Laws that within a short time gave bound to that barbarous animosity The Laws made in Scotland to the prejudice of the English were likewise repealed there so that all passages were made smooth on both sides This Session also produced divers good Laws for the benefit of the Common-wealth But this Session brought in no money that is as the blood of the Subject which He as a wise Physician would not strain from them the ordinary way lest the sense of it should bring the more fears and faintings with it but by laying on little Burthens at first he not only inured them to bear greater but made them sweat out some of that humor insensibly though they felt it afterward when they found the weight laid upon their shoulders only as they conceived to daub other mens with bravery For the Kings Bounty was seen by the vulgar eye to overflow in many little Rivulets who knew the golden streams that out-faced the Sun came not from the Norths cold climate but were drained out of the fountains of their labor They could not endure to see their fellow Subjects grow fat by what should be their nourishment Collecting that the King had received three hundred and fifty thousand
pounds subsidies due to the late Queen besides what the Parliament had given him And fearing that Proclamations who were indeed very active Ministers would now become Laws ushering in the Kings will with large strides upon the peoples Liberties who lay down while they stept over them The ingenious sort sensible of this incroaching Monarchy brake out into private murmur which by degrees being of a light nature carried a Cloud with it by which the wise Pilots of the State foreseeing a Storm gathering strive to dissipate it the next Session of Parliament which was held the nineteenth of February in the seventh year of our Kings Reign Thomas Sackville Earl of Dorset Not long after this the Earl of Dorset Lord High Treasurer died suddenly as he sate at the Council Table which gave occasion to some persons disaffected to him as what eminent Officer that hath the managing of Moneys can please all to speak many things to his Dishonour But they considered not that besides the Black worm and the White day and night as the Riddle is that are gnawing constantly at the root of this tree of Life there are many insensible Diseases as Apoplexies whose Vapors suddenly extinguish the Animal Spirits and Apostems both in the upper and middle Region of Man that often drown and suffocate both Animal and Vital who are like imbodyed Twins the one cannot live without the other if the Animal Spirits fail the Vital cannot subsist if the Vitals perish the Animal give over their operations And He that judges ill of such an Act of Providence may have the same hand at the same time writing within the Palace walls of his own Body the same Period to his Lives earthly Empire The Earl of Salisbury succeeded him a man nourished with the milk of Policy under his father the Lord Burley famous for Wisdom in his Generation a Courtier from his infancy Batteld by Art and Industry under the late Queen mother of her Country Though Nature was not propitious to his Outside being Crooked backt She supplied that want with admirable indowments within This man the King found Secretary and Master of the Wards and to these he added the Treasurers staff knowing him to be the staff of his Treasury For he had knowledg enough to pry into other Mens Offices aswell as his own and knew the ways of disbursing the Kings moneys The Earl of Northhampton he made Lord Privy Seal and these were the two prime wheels of his triumphant Chariot The Earl of Suffolk was made Lord Chamberlain before but he came far behind in the management of the Kings affairs being a Spirit of a more Grosser Temper fitter to part a fray and Compose the differences of a disordered Court than a Kingdom Upon the Shoulders of the two first the King laid the Burthen of his business For though he had many Lords his Creatures some by Creation and some by insinuation for Kings will never want supple-hand Courtiers and the Bishops being his Dependents the most of them tending by direct Lines towards him as the Center of their advancement so that He like the Supreme Power moved this upper Region for the most part and that had an influence upon the lower in inferior Orbs yet these two noble Men were the two great Lights that were to discover the Kings mind to the Parliament and by whose Heat and Vigor the blessed fruits of Peace and Plenty should be produced The Lord Treasurer by a Command from the King instructs both Houses in their business and what they shall do well to insist upon this Session First To supply his Majesties wants Secondly To ease the people of their Grievances They go commonly yoakt together for the peoples Grievances are the Kings Wants and the Kings Wants are the peoples Grievances How can they be separated If the King will always want the people will always suffer For Kings when they do want lay commonly lawless impositions on the people which they must take off again with a sum of money and then they want again to a continued vicissitude These two Propositions are sweetned by him with a third Which is to make the Parliament witnesses of those great favours and honours that his Majesty intended his Royal Son Prince Henry in creating him Prince of Wales Which though the King might do without a Parliament and that divers Kings his Predecessors had done so as by many precedents was manifested yet being desirous to have a happy Vnion betwixt him and his People he would have nothing resound ill in their ears from so eminent an instrument to the Kingdoms good as his Son Then they excuse the Kings necessities proceeding from his great disbursements For the three hundred and fifty thousand pounds Subsidies due in the late Queens time he received with one hand and paid her Debts with another redeeming the Crown Lands which she had morgaged to the City He kept an Army of nineteen thousand men in Ireland for some time a foot wherein a great many of the Nobility were Commanders and other deserving Soldiers that would have been exposed to want and penury if not supplied And it was not safe for the King to trust the inveterate malice of a new reconciled Enemy without the Sword in his hand The late Queens Funeral Charges were reckon'd up which they hoped the Parliament would not repine at Nor was it fit the King should come in as a private Person bringing in one Crown on his head and finding another here or his Royal Consort with our future Hopes like so many precious Ienels exposed to Robbers without a Guard and Retinue How fit was the Magnificence at the King of Denmarks being here And how just that Ambassadors from Foreign Princes more than ever this Crown received should find those Entertainments and Gratuities the want whereof would put a dim lustre abroad upon the most sparkling Jewels of the Crown Besides the necessary Charge of sending Ambassadors to others being concurrent and mutual Civilities among Princes That these are the causes of the Kings wants and not his irregular Bounty though a magnificent mind is inseparable from the Majesty of a King If he did not give his subjects and servants would live in a miserable Climate And for his Bounty to those that were not born among us it must be remembred he was born among them and not to have them taste of the blessing he hath attained were to have him change his Vertue with his Fortune Therefore they desire the Kings wants may be supplied a thing easie to be granted and not to be valued by Wise-men nor spoken of without contempt Philosophy saith that all Riches are but food and rayment the rest is nugatorium quiddam And that it is but purior pars terrae and therefore but crassior pars aquae a thing unworthy the denial to such a King who is not only the wisest of Kings but the very Image of an Angel that hath brought good
tidings and setled us in the fruition of all good things He whose depth of Knowledge as well as Conscience deserves the Title of Fidei defensor whose numerous Issue makes Foreign Princes study to keep their own not look abroad He that hath shut the back-door of the Kingdom and placed two Lions a red and a yellow to secure it who would have us live under our own Olive that we may laetari benefacere That none will wonder at the Want or startle at the supply but such as study to serve their own turns and believe nothing but what they find written in the stories of their own ignorance Among which those are to be reckon'd who hearing of an Order to bind up the printed Proclamations in a book that the better notice may be taken of the things contained in them have raised a bruit that it was intended this Parliament to make Proclamations equal to the Laws which never entred into the Kings heart who is so far from governing by will and power that he will yield to any motion from them wherein they shall hold a just Diameter and proportion among themselves and observe those Duties due to a great and gracious King Thus these Lords did please themselves and the King by striving to keep the people in the milky way of Obedience which they had long suckt in and found the sweet of it tending to nourishment not yet meeting any Callous or Brawny-constitution which must harden them by degrees nor yet finding their own Tempers grown Robust enough by so harsh a diet as afterwards they met with They therefore are willing to go on in the way pointed out to them as Pupils follow their Masters minding rather the smoothness of the Tract they saw than the roughness of the end Yet some of them whose hopes were not so high mounted and their spirits more spoke plainly That the whole wealth of England would not serve the Kings vast Bounty therefore it was a vain thing to give him that would give it away again That Gold and Silver in Edenburgh now in our Solomons time are like the stones in the streets never so much glittering there like a perpetual spring-time Besides they look upon the Kings incroachments upon the publick liberty by undermining the Laws taking notice of some expressions that fell from him publickly at his dinner in derogation of the Common Law extolling highly the Civil Law before it and approving a Book lately written by Doctor Cowell a Civilian against it Which netled our great Lawyers that had not some of them been raised so high that they could not with that Court-gag look downwards it had bred a contest The High-Commission also began now to swell into a Grievance which the Parliament complained of Seldom is Authority and Power exercised with Moderation Every man must conform to the Episcopal way and quit his hold in Opinion or safety That Court was the Touch stone to try whether men were metal for their stamp and if they were not soft enough to take such impressions as were put upon them they were made malleable there or else they could not pass current This was the beginning of that mischief which when it came to a full ripeness made such a bloody Tincture in both Kingdoms as never will be got out of the Bishops Lawn sleeves And though these Apples of strife thrown in the way did a little retard the course in hand yet they carried not the prize For the King according to his old wont like a cunning Hunter when they began to run counter called them off and at White-hall by one of his Lectures he strives to bring them into the way again By laying himself open as in a Glass wherein if they could not see his heart they might scent out his meaning and so follow the chace which was to be pursued He tells them though the Kings heart be in the hands of the Lord yet he will set it before the eyes of the people Assuring them that he never meant to govern by any Law but the Law of the Land though it be disputed among them as if he had an intention to alter the Law and govern by the absolute Power of a King He knew said he the Power of Kings resembling it to the Power Divine For as God can create and destroy make and unmake at his pleasure so Kings can give life and death judg all and be judged of none They can exalt low things and abase high things making the subjects like men at Chess a pawn to take a Bishop or a Knight But he left out the power of a Pawn to take a Queen or check a King And when he had raised the Kings power to the height with Vos dii estis he brings them down again with They shall die like men And that all Kings who are not Tyrants or perjur'd will bound themselves within the limits of their Laws and they that perswade them the contrary are Vipers and Pests both against them and the Common-wealth Yet as it is Blasphemy to dispute what God may do so it is Sedition in Subjects to dispute what a King may do in the height of his power And as he will not have his subjects discourse of what he may do so he will do nothing but what shall be consonant to Law and Reason Then he strives to mitigate the sharpness of the words dropt from him at his Table to the disparagement of the Common Law and assures them though he likes the Civil Law very well as being Lex Gentium which maintains intercourse with foreign Nations and sitted to the Ecclesiastical Courts Court of Admiralty and Courts of Request yet he is so far from disavowing the Common Law that he protests if he were to chuse a new Law for this Kingdom he would prefer it before any other National Law yea the Law of Moses nay without blasphemy the very Law of God Then he recalls himself and tells them That though for this Nation he had preferred the Common Law to the Law of God yet it is inferiour to the Iudicial Law For no Book or Law is free from corruption but the Book and Law of God And therefore he could wish that three things specially were purged out of Common Law First That it were written in the vulgar Tongue and made plain to the peoples understanding that they might know what to obey that the Lawyers in the Law like the Romish Priests in the Gospel might not keep the people in ignorance Secondly That the Common Law might have a setled Text in all Cases for being grounded upon old Customs Reports and Cases of former Iudges called Responsa prudentum which are not binding for divers times Iudges disclaim them and recede from the Iudgment of their Predecessors it were good upon mature deliberation that the Exposition of the Law were set down by Act of Parliament that the people might know what to depend upon Thirdly There is in
this the passage to his entertainment The King strucken suddenly with such heaps asked the Treasurer what this money was for who told him he had received his Majesties Commands to give so much to the Viscount Rochester The King that either carelesly thought five thousand pound to be no more than the noise so much makes in Scotland which doth not amount to above five hundred pounds or cunningly if he knew the value knew also the Treasurers meaning said it was too much for one man and made him be contented with less than the half And now the King casts his thoughts towards Peterborough where his Mother lay whom he caused to be translated to a Magnificent Tomb at Westminster And somewhat suitable to her mind when she was living she had a translucent passage in the night through the City of London by multitudes of Torches The Tapers placed by the Tomb and the Altar in the Cathedral smoaking with them like an Offertory with all the Ceremonies and Voices their Quires and Copes could express attended by many Prelates and Nobles who payd this last Tribute to her memory This was accounted a Piaculous action of the Kings by many though some have not stuck to say That as Queen Elizabeth was willing to be rid of the Queen of Scots yet would not have it her action and being it could not be done without her command when it was done she renounced her own act So though the King was angry when he heard his Mother was taken away by a violent death recalling his Ambassador threatning War and making a great noise which was after calmed and closed up with a large Pension from the Queen yet he might well enough be pleased that such a spirit was layd as might have conjured up three Kingdoms against him For Patrick Grey that the King sent to disswade Queen Elizabeth from taking away his Mothers life was the greatest Instrument to perswade her to it Distilling always into her this Sentence Mortua non mordet When she is dead she cannot bite But the Love that tends to self-preservation is an adjunct of Nature more powerful than Filial duty and therefore there will be no great strife where there are not adequate operations This time was also presented unto us in a various dress and the event shewed though some years after there was more cause of Mourning than Rejoycing though the latter got the predominance For the Prince Elector Palatine came over into England to Marry the Kings only Daughter and Death deprived us of the Kings eldest Son A Prince as eminent in Nobleness as in Blood and having a spirit too full of life and splendour to be long shrouded in a cloud of flesh If that which gave life to his life had been less he might happily have lived longer Not that there was too much Oyl or that concurrent Natural Balsamum in this fair and well-composed Lamp to extinguish it self but the light that came from it might cast so radiant a lustre as by darkning others it came to lose the benefit of its own glory Iealousie is like fire that burns all before it and that fire is hot enough to dissolve all Bonds that tends to the diminution of a Crown The Prince of Spain his contemporary Son to Philip the second not long before this like a young Phaeton wished himself but one day in his Fathers Throne and he fell not long after into the hard hand of an immature fate before he could step into the Chariot So dangerous are the paths of Greatness that the tongue many times rouling aside makes men tread awry Strange Rumors are raised upon this sudden expiration of our Prince the disease being so violent that the combate with Nature in the strength of youth being almost nineteen years of age lasted not above five days Some say he was poysoned with a bunch of Grapes others attribute it to the venemous scent of a pair of Gloves presented to him the distemper lying for the most part in the head They that knew neither of these are strucken with fear and amazement as if they had tasted or felt the effects of those violences Private whisperings and suspicions of some new designs a foot broaching Prophetical terrors That a black CARLO D'AVSTRIA PRINCIPE DI SPAGNA Christmas would produce a bloody Lent For the Spaniard who opposed the marriage of the Prince Palatine and saw their ruin growing up in Prince Henries towardly Spirit were reputed vulgarly the Mint-masters of some horrid practices and that a Ship of Pocket Pistols was come out of Spain fit Instruments for a Massacre And these Trepidations were not only in the lower Region but wrought upwards so high that Proclamations were sent abroad to forbid the making or carrying of Pistols under a foot long in the Barrel And all Papists are not only dis-armed being ever esteemed Vassals to the Catholick King but their Actions with caution pried into In such dark clouds as these the whole Kingdom was at a loss all ordinary Transitions of Nature are imputed to prodigious Omens the greater the fears are the more blazing is the Meteor that arises from them Some that knew the bickerings betwixt the Prince and the Viscount muttered out dark Sentences that durst not look into the light especially Sir Iames Elphington who observing the Prince one day to be discontented with the Viscount offered to kill him but the Prince reproved him with a gallant Spirit saying If there were Cause he would do it himself Now whether these rumors begot a further scrutiny or whether it be the Court-trick to daub and slubber over things that may be perspicuous I know not But the Physicians about the Prince gave it under their hands which was spread abroad in several copies that he died of a strong malignant Feaver so are all violent dissolutions where Nature hath power of resistance that his Liver was pale and livid lead-like the Gall had no Gall but was full of wind the Spleen was unnaturally black and the Lungs in many places spotted with much corruption the Midriff or Diaphragma blackish and the Head in some places full of blood and in some places full of clear water Thus was he Anatomized to amuze the World and clear the suspicion of poyson as if no venoms could produce these effects He died the sixth of November and was carried on a Hearse Triumphing even in Death to Westminster the seventh of December following the pomp of the Funeral being fully compleated with the People tears and Lamentations But the King though he could not but be troubled to lose so near a part of himself looked over all these Mists and like the Sun dispelled all these Clouds and Vapours commanding no man should appear in the Court in mourning he would have nothing in his Eye to bring so sad a Message to his Heart The jollity feasting and magnificence of Christmas must not be laid down There were Princes and Nobles
into a Coffin and bury him privately on Tower-Hill Concluding That God is gracious in cutting off evil Instruments before their time Which Sentence while he was writing it reflected the judgment on himself For Northampton having a great influence in the Kingdom being a prime Counsellor to the King and intimate with Somerset they two grasping all Power and Northampton having the better head to manage it the miscarriages were not without cause imputed to him For being a Papist he did not only work upon Somerset to pervert him by letting him see there was a greater latitude for the Conscience in that Religion but got him to procure many immunities for the Papists as the Kings best affected Subjects And being Lord Warden of the Cinque-Ports he gave free access to Priests and Iesuits that abundantly flockt again into the Kingdom the operation of the last Proclamation having now lost the vertue And a Letter being discovered which he had written to Cardinal Bellarmine wherein he expresses the condition of the Times and the Kings importunity compelled him to be a Protestant in shew yet nevertheless his heart stood firm with the Papists and if there were cause he would express it with much more to this purpose These things first muttered then urged against him touched him to the heart so that he retired disposed of his Estate and dyed He had a great mind tending towards eminent things which he was the better able to effect by living a Batchelor to an old Age being always attended and he loved it with Gentlemen of Quality to whom he was very bountiful His affections were also much raised to Charity as by the Almshouse he erected appears and his Works shew him to be a great getter But leaving no Issue to propagate his name he built a fair House by Charing-cross to continue it which it lost soon after his death being called Suffolk-house for a time and now is Northumberland-house Such changes there are in the Worlds measures His Body was carried to be buried at Dover because he was Warden of the Cinque-Ports as was reported by some of his Followers but it was vulgarly rumored to be transported to Rome But these actions of his about Overbury lying dormant made no great noise at this time against him but when they broke out they laid upon his name as great a stench as Infamy or Oaium could produce SUFFOLK HOUSE CHARING CROSS The Spaniards the first discoverers being more covetous to grasp than well able to plant took possession of the most precious places so that the English French and Dutch caught but what they left Sir Walter Rawleigh and others after Sir Francis Drake found out that Country now called Virginia which was long since planted with a Colony And in that tract of Land more Northerly within the degrees of 40 and 48 of latitude lies New-England a Climate temperate and healthful but not so much as the Old It is rather a low than a high Land full of Rocky-Capes or Promontories The Inmost parts of the Country are Mountainous intermixt with fruitful Vallies and large Lakes which want not store of good Fish The Hills are no where Barren though in some places Stony but fruitful in Trees and Grass There are many Rivers fresh Brooks and Springs that run into the Sea The Rivers are good Harbors and abound with plenty of excellent Fish yet are they full of Falls which makes them not Navigable far into the Land The Seas bordering the Shores are studded with Islands about which great Shoals of Fishes Cod Haddock and such like do wantonly sport themselves The main Land doth nourish abundance of Deers Bears Wolves and a beast called Moose peculiar to those Regions and the Rivers and Ponds are stored with some Beavers Otters and Musquashes There are also divers kinds of small Beasts but the most offensive are Foxes Fowls there are store in their several seasons as Turkies Geese and Ducks and the soyl naturally produces wild Vines with very large Bunches of Grapes but the extremity of heat and cold hinder their just temper There are many other Fruits which are very good with Plants whose Rinds or Barks transcends our Hemp or Flax both Air and Earth concurring to bring forth most things that Industry and Art can provide for the use of man The first that sent a Colony into this Country was the Lord Chief Justice Popham in the year 1606. A man highly renowned in his time for persecuting such as transgressed the Laws among Christians living like Beasts of prey to the prejudice of Travellers And in this he had a special aim and hope also to establish Christian Laws among Infidels and by domestical to chace away those ferous and indomitable Creatures that infested the Land Brave and gallant spirits having ever such publick ends But Planters are like Alchymists they have something in projection that many times fails in production It is conceived the Romans were not well advised to settle one of their first Colonies at Maldon in Essex whose soyl about is neither yet sound nor Air salubrious And the first opening of ground in a Climate not Natural hath an extraordinary operation upon the Bodies of Men whose Senses must comply to give entertainment to a Stranger that often spoils the place where it finds Hospitality For the first Planters of New-England having seated themselves low few of them were left to direct those that succeeded in a better way Yet People by dear experience overcame it by degrees being yearly supplied by men whose industry and affections taught them there was more hope to find safety in New-England than in the Old Though these found some stop yet our great Favourite the Earl of Somerset and his business runs smoothly without rub since Overburies death But he must alter his Bias and go less or find some new ways to bring in Monies the Revenues of the Crown are not competent to maintain such vast Expences accumulated by his Riot though he had all the Earl of Westmorelands Lands at his Marriage and Creation added to his Earldom There must be therefore a new Order of Baronets made in number two hundred that must be next Degree to Barons and these must pay a thousand pound a piece for their Honour having it by Patent under the great Seal and continued to Posterity with the Title of Knights Some of these new Honourable men whose Wives pride and their own Prodigalities had pumpt up to it were so drained that they had not moisture to maintain the radical humour but wither'd no nothing This money thus raised is pretended for planting the North of Ireland but it found many other Chanels before it came to that Sea And though at our Kings first access to the Crown there was a glut of Knights made yet after some time he held his hand left the Kingdom should be cloyed with them And the World thriv'd so well with some that the price was afterwards brought
easily committed and concealed It is an offence that is Tanquam sagitta nocte volans it is the Arrow that flies by night it discerns not whom it hits for many times the poyson is laid for one and another takes it As in Sanders case where the poysoned Apple was laid for the Mother and the Child eat it And so in that notorious Case whereupon the Statute of 22 Hen. 8. cap. 9. was made where the intent being but to poyson one or two poyson was put in a little Vessel of Barm that stood in the Kitchen at the Bishop of Rochesters house of which Barm Pottage or Grewel was made wherewith seventeen of the Bishops Family were poysoned nay divers of the poor that came to the Bishops-gate and had the Pottage in Alms were likewise poysoned Here is great talk of Impoysonment I hope I am safe I have no enemies nor any thing men can long for that is all one for he may sit at the Table by one for whom poyson is prepared and have a drench of his Cup or of his Pottage and so as the Poet saith Concidit infelix alieno vulnere he may die another mans death and therefore it was most gravely judiciously and properly provided by that Statute that Impoysonment should be High-Treason because whatsoever offence tendeth to the utter subversion and dissolution of Human Society is in the nature of High-Treason But it is an offence that I may truly say of it Non est nostri generis nec sanguinis It is thanks be to God rare in the Isle of Britain It is neither of our Country nor of our Church You may find it in Rome and Italy there is a Religion for it if it should come among us it were better living in a Wilderness than in a Court. For the particular fact upon Overbury I knew the Gentleman it is true his mind was great but it moved not in any great good order yet certainly it did commonly fly at good things and the greatest fault that ever I heard by him was That he made his Friend his Idol But take him as he was the Kings Prisoner in the Tower and then see how the Case stands In that place the State is as it were a Respondent to make good the Body of the Prisoner and if any thing happen to him there it may though not in this Case yet in some others make an aspersion and reflexion upon the State it self For the person is utterly void of his own defence his own care and providence can serve him to nothing He is in the custody and preservation of Law and we have a Maxim in our Law that when a State is in preservation of Law nothing can destroy it or hurt it and God forbid but the like should be in Persons and therefore this was a circumstance of great aggravation Lastly To have a man chased to death in a manner as it appears now by matter of Record for other privacy of Cause I know not by poyson after poyson First Rosaker then Arsnick then Mercury sublimate then sublimate again it is a thing would astonish mans nature to hear it The Poets feign that the Furies had Whips and that they were corded with poysoned Snakes and a man would think that this subject were the very Case To have a man tied to a post and to scourge him to death with Serpents for so truly may diversity of poysons be termed It pleased my Lord Chief Justice to let me know that which I heard with great comfort which was the charge that his Majesty gave to himself and the rest of the Commissioners in this Case worthy to be written in Letters of Gold That the business should be carried without touch to any that was innocent not only without impeachment but without aspersion which was a most Noble and Princely caution for mens Reputations are tender things and ought to be like Christs Coat without seam And it was more to be respected in this Case because it met with two great Persons A Nobleman that his Majesty had favoured and advanced and his Lady being of a great and Honourable House though I think it be true that the Writers say that there is no Pomegranate so fair or so sound but may have a perished Kernel Nay I see plainly in those excellent Papers of his Majesties own hand-writing as so many beams of Iustice issuing from that Vertue which so much doth shine in him the business so evenly carried without prejudice whether it were a true Accusation on the one part or a practice or false Accusation on the other as shewed plainly that his Majesties judgment was Tanquam tabula rasa as a clean pair of Tables and his ears Tanquam janua aperta as a gate not side open but wide open to the Truth as it should be discovered And I may truly affirm that there was never in this Kingdom nor in any other the blood of a private Gentleman vindicated Cum tanto motu Regni or to say better Cum tanto plausu Regni If it had concerned the King or Prince there could not have been greater or better Commissioners The term hath been almost turned into a Iustium or Vacancy the people being more willing to be lookers on in this business than proceeders in their own There hath been no care of discovery omitted no moment of time lost and therefore I will conclude with the saying of Solomon this part of my Speech Gloria Deicelare rem and gloria Regis scrutari rem It is the glory of God to conceal a thing and it is the glory of the King to find it out And his Majesties honor is the greater for that he shewed to the World this business as it hath relation to my Lord of Somerset whose Case in no sort I do fore-judg being ignorant of the secrets of the cause but take him as the Law takes him hitherto for a suspect I say the King hath to his great honor shewed That were any man in such a case of blood as the Signet of his right-hand as the Scripture saith he would put him off Now will I come to the particular Charge of these Gentlemen And first I will by way of Narrative relate the Fact with the occasion of it This wretched man Weston who was the Actor or Mechanical party in this Impoysonment the first day being indicted by a very substantial Iury of selected Citizens to the number of nineteen who found Billa vera yet nevertheless at the first stood mute But after some days intermission it pleased God to cast out the Dumb Devil and he put himself upon his Trial and was by a Iury of great value upon his own Confessions and other testimonies found guilty So as thirty and one sufficient Iurors have past upon him and he had also his Judgment and Execution awarded After this being in preparation for another World he sent for Sir Overbury's Father and falling down upon his knees with great remorse
these Times young Dorothy the eldest Daugâ—teâ— married Robert Viscount Lisle after the death of his Father Eâ—â—l of Leicester by whom he had a numerous Issue like Clive branches aâ—out his Table The younger Daughter Lucy a Lady of â—â—â—ompâ—rable Beauty solemnized in the Poâ—â—s oâ—â—he most exquiâ—â—e Witsâ—f â—f her time married the Lord Hayes now made Viâ—count Doncaster against hâ—r Father's will â—ho aimed at higher â—xtractiâ—â—â— during his Imprisonment which the old Earâ—'s stubborn spirit not brooking would never give hâ—r any thing And Doncaster whose affection was abâ—ve money â—etting only a valuationâ—pon â—pon his much-admired Bride strove to make himselâ— meritorious and prevailed so with the King for his Fâ—ther-in 〈◊〉 that he got his Release But the old Earl would hâ—rdly be drawn to take a Release from his hand so that when he had liberty he restrained himself and with much importunity was wrought upon by such as knew the distempers of his body might best qualifie those of his mind peâ—â—uading him â—oâ—â—ome indisposition to make a journey to the Bath â—hich was one special motive to accept of his Son-in-laâ—'s respects HONORATISSâ—â—â—â— Dê° HENRICVS PERCEY COMâ—â—â—â— NORTHVMBERIANâ—… If Art could shewe the Spirit in the Face And in dead Sines expresse a Liuing Grace You might though wanting an Inscription sweare That this the shadowe of a PERCY were For when the Noblest Romane worthies Liud Though greater Fame their Fortunes have atcheiud No brauer Spiritts did in ROME command Then were the PERCYS of NORTHVMBERIAND But now War breaks in upon us following that blazing Fore-runner the House of Austria like Pyrrhus and Lysander extending their Dominions no further than the Sword could reach having long seat hered their Nests with the Eagles plumes grew formidable to the Princes and States of Germany And because they found the Popes had shrewdly plumed some of their Predecessors till they had wrested most parts of Italy from the Empire they were content to maintain their Grandure by the Popes power and to ingratiate themselves the more became great Persecutors of the Reformed Religion A little before this time Ferdinand Uncles Son to Matthias the Emperor was Crowned King of Bohemia with this Reservation that he should not exercise the Power of a King as long as the old Emperor lived This kind of Crowning of Kings one in the life of another was the great Chain that link by link held the Empire and the two Kingdoms of Hungaria and Bohemia together in the Austrian Family so that the State of either Kingdom could not or durst not put forth their Strength to shake them asunder The Emperor kept his Court at Vienna King Ferdinand at Gretz in Stiria so that the Government of Bohemia rested in such Counsellors as the Emperor Matthias left there for the management of Publick Affairs These Counsellors and Ministers with the Archbishop of Prague broke out about this time not only to demolish the Protestant Churches but by the help of the Iesuits their bitter Enemies strove to undermine the Religion it self The Protestant States and Nobles of the Country summoning an Assembly to redress their Grievances were opposed by some of them Emperor's Ministers of State the very day of their meeting which exasperated them to such a height of Passion being backt by some Forces they brought with them for their Security that they threw Slabata the Emperor's chief Justice Smesansius one of the Council of State and Fabricius a pragmatical Secretary from a high Window in the Castle down into the Court though some of them took little hurt and lived as reports go to this time This rash Action the Bohemians strive to palliate by Apologies to the Emperor but withal strengthned themselves making Leavies both of Horse and Foot the better to secure their own Peace and banishing those Firebrands the Iesuits out of Prague whose malicious and distemper'd Zeal first kindled the Flame The Emperor hearing of these mischiefs raises an Army under the command of Count Bucquoy and the Protestant States finding the Emperor exasperated raise two Armies one commanded by Count Thurne the other by Count Mansfeldt some bickrings past betwixt the Imperial Army and the Bohemians some Towns taken on both sides and in the heat of this stir the old Emperor dies Ferdinand King of Hungary and Bohemia and adopted heir of old Matthias meeting after summons at Frankford with the three Electors of Mentz Collen and Trevers and only with the Representatives of the other three Electors The Church carried it for him and he was chosen King of the Romans The States of Bohemia disclaimed the election as invalid because he could not be an Elector himself as King of Bohemia for that he had never been actually in possession of the Crown And though their dissent could not lessen Ferdinand's Election to the Empire yet they protested by oath never to acknowledge him for their King These eruptions made a noise all over Christendom and most knowing men looked on this heavenly Torch the late Comet as fit fuel to give fire to such a train Our King fearing the clap would fall heavy upon the Protestant party sent the Viscount Doncaster extraordinary Ambassador to mediate a Reconciliation betwixt the Emperor and the Bohemians But the asperity and bitterness was too great to find an allay by his sweet and candid Complements being sitter for the bosoms of Lovers than the armed breasts of Uprores and Tumults LOTHARIVS PAR LA GRACE DE DIEV ARCHEVESQVE DE TREVES B. Moucorneâ— excudit Our King that looked upon his own condition through the Optique of the peoples mutable and unstable affection would by no means countenance such a Precedent as should give them power to dispose of an established Royal dignity at their pleasure and upon every change of humor for so he might shake his own foundation which made the Barons addresses crude and nauseous to his Appetite till time had a little digested them And then he dispatched two Ambassadors into Bohemia One was Sir Richard Weston who was afterwards Lord high Treasurer of England and left to his posterity the Earldom of Portland a man of a haughty spirit yet knew how by suppling it to make his way to the height he arrived at For his Religion gave place to his Policy and mounted him till he became one of the great grievances of the Kingdom The other was Sir Edward Conwey a man of a grosser temper bred a Soldier being Governor of Bril when England gave over her interest in the cautionary Towns who was after made a Viscount and Secretary of State a rough impollished peice for such an imployment But the King that wanted not his Abilities would often make himself merry with his imperfect scrouls in writing and hacking expressions in reading so that he would break into laughter and say in a facetious way Had ever man such a Secretary that can neither Write nor Read These two were suited for the imployment happily upon
more prayers and oblations offered here to the Mother than to the Son For the Marquess himself as he was a man of excellent symmetry and proportion of parts so he affected beauty where he found it but yet he looks upon the whole race of Women as inferior things and uses them as if the Sex were one best pleased with all And if his eye cull'd out a wanton beauty he had his Setters that could spread his Nets and point a meeting at some Ladies House where he should come as by accident and find Accesses while all his Train attended at the dore as if it were an honourable visit The Earl of Rutland of a Noble Family had but one Daughter to be the Mistris of his great Fortune and he tempts her carries her to his Lodgings in Whitehall keeps her there for some time and then returns her back again to her Father The stout old Earl sent him this threatning Message That he had too much of a Gentleman to suffer such an indignity and if he did not marry his Daughter to repair her honour no greatness should protect him from his justice Buckingham that perhaps made it his design to get the Father's good will this way being the greatest match in the Kingdom had no reason to mislike the Union therefore he quickly salved up the wound before it grew to a quarrel And if this Marriage stopt the Current of his sins he had the less to answer for This young Lady was bred a Papist by her Mother but after her Marriage to the Marquess she was converted by Doctor White as was pretended and grew a zealous Protestant but like a morning dew it quickly vanished For the old Countess of Buckingham never left working by her sweet Instruments the Iesuits till she had placed her on the first foundation So that the Marquess betwixt a Mother and a Wife began to be indifferent no Papist yet no Protestant but the Arminian Tenets taking root were nourished up by him and those that did not hold the same opinions were counted Puritans These new indifferences now grew so hot in England that the Protestant Cause grew very cold in Germany Which made the spirits of most men rise against the Spanish Faction at home and Spain's incroaching Monarchy abroad And though the King sped ill the last Parliament of Somerset's undertaking and thought to lay them by for ever as he often expressed looking upon them as incroachers into his Prerogative and diminishers of his Majesty and Glory making Kings less and Subjects more than they are Yet now finding the peoples desires high-mounted for regaining the Palatinate he thought they would look only up towards that and liberally open their Purses which he might make use of and this Unanimity and good agreement betwixt him and his people would induce his Brother of Spain to be more active in the Treaty in hand and so he should have supply from the one and dispatch from the other But Parliaments that are like Physicians to the bodies of Common-wealths when the humors are once stirred they find cause enough many times to administer sharp Medicines where there was little appearance of Diseases For in this Recess and Ease Time-servers and Flatterers had cried up the Prerogative And the King wanting Money for his vast expenses had furnished himself by unusual courses For Kings excessive in gifts will find followers excessive in demands and they that weaken themselves in giving lose more in gathering than they gain in the gift For Prodigality in a Soveraign ends in the Rapine and Spoil of the Subject To help himself therefore and those that drained from him he had granted several Patents to undertakers and Monopolizers whereby they preyed upon the people by suits and exactions milkt the Kingdom and kept it poor the King taking his ease and giving way to Informers the Gentry grown debauched and Fashion-mongers and the Commons sopt and besotted with quiet and restiness drunk in so much disability that it might well be said by Gondemar England had a great many people but few men And he would smile at their Musters for through disuse they were grown careless of Military Discipline ill provided of Arms effeminate Officers neglecting their charges and duties conniving for gain at their Neighbours miscarriages Some of the Officers in the Militia and Iustices of the Peace not a few being Church-Papists floating upon the smooth stream of the times overwhelming all others that opposed them stigmatizing them with the name of Puritans and that was mark enough to hinder the current of any proceeding or preferment aimed at or hoped for either in Church or State And the Iesuits ranging up and down like spirits let loose did not now as formerly creep into corners using close and cunning Artifices but practised them openly having admission to our Counsellors of State for when Secretaries and such as manage the intimate Counsels of Kings are Iesuitical and Clients to the Pope there can be no tendency of Affection to a contrary Religion or Policy Those were only most active in the Court of England that courted the King of Spain most and could carry the face of a Protestant and the heart of a Papist the rest were contented to go along with the cry For they hunted but a cold scent and could pick out and make nothing of it that drew off or crost or hunted counter Which raised the spirits of the people so high against them that were the chief Hunters in these times that they brought the King himself within the compass of their Libels and Pasquils charging him to love his hounds better than his people And if this bad blood had been heated to an itch of Innovation it would have broke out to a very fore and incurable Malady every man seeing the danger few men daring to prevent it The Pulpits were the most bold Opposers but if they toucht any thing upon the Spanish policy or the intended Treaties for the Restitution of the Palatinate was included in the Marriage before it was the Spaniards to give their mouths must be stopt by Gondemar without the Lady Iacob's Receipt and it may be confined or imprisoned for it So that there were noplain downright blows to be given but if they cunningly and subtily could glance at the misdemeanors of the Times and smooth it over metaphorically it would pass current though before the King himself For about this time one of his own Chaplains preaching before him at Greenwich took this Text 4 Mat. 8. And the Devil took Iesus to the top of a Mountain and shewed him all the Kingdoms of the World saying All these will I give c. He shewed what power the Devil had in the World at that time when he spake these words and from thence he came down to the power of the Devil now And dividing the World into four parts he could not make the least of the four to be Christian and of
those how few went God's way So that he concluded the Devil to be a great Monarch having so many Kingdoms under his command and no doubt he had his Vice Roys Council of State Treasurers Secretaries and many other Officers to manage and order his affairs for there was order in hell it self which after he had mustered together he gives a character of every particular Officer who were fit to be the Devil's servants running through the body of the Court discovering the correspondencies with Iesuits secret Pensions from Foreign Princes betraying their Masters Counsels to deserve their Rewards working and combining to the prejudice of God's people And when he came to describe the Devil's Treasurers exactions and gripings to get mony he fixt his eye upon Cranfield then Lord Treasurer whose marriage into the house of Fortune and Title of Earl could not keep him from being odious to the people and pointing at him with his hand said with an Emphasis That man reiterating it That man that makes himself rich and his Master poor he is a fit Treasurer for the Devil This the Author heard and saw whilst Cranfield sat with his hat pulled down over his eyes ashamed to look up lest he should find all mens eyes fixt upon him the King who sat just over him smiling at the quaint Satyr so handsomly coloured over It seems Neile the Bishop of Lincoln was not by him then for when any man preached that had the Renown of Piety unwilling the King should hear him he would in the Sermon time entertain the King with a merry Tale that I may give it no worse title which the King would after laugh at and tell those near him he could not hear the Preacher for the old B. Bishop We must confess this Relation smells too rank but it was too true and hope the modest Reader will excuse it We having had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave it out seeing it proceeds not from any rancour of spirit against the Prelacy but to vindicate God's Iustice to Posterity who never punishes without a Cause and such like practices as these were doubtless put upon the score which after gave a period to that Hierarchy This man's hand helped to close up the Countess of Essex's Virginity when he was Coventry and Litchfield his heart had this kind of vanity when he was Lincoln and when he was Arch-bishop of York his head was so filled with Arminian impiety that in the next King's Reign he was looked upon by the Parliament to be one of the great Grievances of the Kingdom as will follow in the Tract of this Story Lionell Craufield Earle of Middlesex Baron Cranfield of Cranfield The King that either thought these instruments were not so active or that they would not be discovered was resolved upon a Parliament for the former Reasons which began the twentieth of Ianuary this year yet not being ignorant of some miscarriages that passed by his allowance he strives to palliate them and gives the Parliament some little touches of them by the way that when they should find them they might by his Anticipation appear the less And being loth to have the breach between him and his people made wider he thus strives to stop the gap MY Lords Spiritual and Temporal and you the Commons cui multiloquio non deest peccatum In the last Parliament â— made long Discourses especially to them of the Lower House I did open the true thought of my heart But I may say with our Saviour I have piped to you and you have not danced I have mourned and you have not lamented Yet as no man's Actions can be free so in me God found some spices of Vanity and so all my sayings turned to me again without any success And now to tell the Reasons of your Calling and this Meeting apply it to your selves and spend not the time in long Speeches Consider That the Parliament is a thing composed of a Head and a Body the Monarch and the two Estates It was first a Monarchy then after a Parliament there are no Parliaments but in Monarchical Governments for in Venice the Netherlands and other Free-Governments there are none The Head is to call the Body together and for the Clergy the Bishops are chief for Shires their Knights and for Towns and Cities their Burgesses and Citizens These are to treat of difficult matters and to counsel their King with their best advice to make Laws for the Commonweal and the Lower-House is also to petition the King and acquaint him with their grievances and not to meddle with their King's Prerogative They are to offer supply for his necessity and he to distribute in recompence thereof Iustice and Mercy As in all Parliaments it is the King's office to make good Laws whose Fundamental Cause is the peoples ill manners so at this time That we may meet with the new Abuses and the incroaching craft of the times particulars shall be read hereafter As touching Religion Laws enough are made already it stands in two points Persuasion and Compulsion Men may persuade but God must give the blessing Iesuits Priests Puritans and Sectaries erring both on the right-hand and left-hand are forward to persuade unto their own ends and so ought you the Bishops in your example and preaching but compulsion to obey is to bind the Conscience There is talk of the Match with Spain But if it shall not prove a furtherance to Religion I am not worthy to be your King I will never proceed but to the Glory of God and content of my Subjects For a supply to my necessities I have reigned eighteen years in which time you have had Peace and I have received far less supply than hath been given to any King since the Conquest The last Queen of famous memory had one year with another above a hundred thousand pounds per annum in Subsidies And in all my time I had but four Subsidies and six Fifteens It is ten years since I had a Subsidy in all which time I have been sparing to trouble you I have turned my self as nearly to save expence as I may I have abated much in my Houshold-expences in my Navies in the charge of my Munition I made not choice of an old beaten Soldier for my Admiral but rather chose a young man whose honesty and integrity I knew whose care hath been to appoint under him sufficient men to lessen my charges which he hath done Touching the miserable dissentions in Christendom I was not the cause thereof for the appeasing whereof I sent my Lord of Doncaster whose journey cost me three thousand five hundred pounds My Son-in-law sent to me for advice but within three days after accepted of the Crown which I did never approve of for three Reasons First for Religion sake as not holding with the Iesuits disposing of Kingdoms rather learning of our Saviour to uphold not to overthrow them Secondly I was no Judg between them
Body of the Kingdom that they might not break out to disgrace the Physician For he looked upon himself as an able Director and yet he found he might be deceived And therefore he brings the Lords into a Wood comparatively to tell them that they appeared to him well grown and fair but searching into them he found them otherwise But he that pretended to the knowledge of all things as give him his due he was well known in most could not be ignorant that the Patents he granted were against the Liberties of the people but whether the execution of them to that extremity came within his Cognizance cannot be determined his damning of them shews his dislike at present condemning that which he knew would be done to his hand if he had not done it and this must not be known only at Westminster and left upon Record to Posterity there but he commanded his Speech to be printed that all his people might know how willing and forward he was to abolish any Act of his that tended to a grievance And though he did not accuse the Marquess of Buckingham for giving way to Informers yet he was much troubled with them till the Parliament began and in that numerous crowd those that brought profit were doubtless admitted with the first These considerations upon the King's Speech buzzed up and down and many of the Parliament men looked upon the Marquess as the first mover of this great Machine but the Wisdom of the House did not rise so high as to strike at the uppermost branches but they pruned those roundly they could reach Buckingham though he were well grown had not yet sap enough to make himself swell into exuberancy as he did afterwards nor was the peoples malice now against him so fertile as to make every little weed a dangerous and poysonous plant being subtile enough yet to crop off any that might appear venomous in relation to himself that the mischievous operations might work upon others For all the world knew Mompesson was his creature and that notwithstanding the King's Proclamation for his interception he got out of the Kingdom by his Key For Buckingham ruled as a Lord Paramount and those that complied with him found as much refuge as his power could secure unto them those that opposed him as much mischief as malice could pour upon them Sir Henry Yelverton the King's Attorney had found the effects of his Anger by not closing with his desires in such Patents as he required so that all his Actions being anatomized some miscarriages are made criminal he is committed to the Tower and another put in his place that should be more observant The King now lays upon him a Warrant Dormant which did not much startle him for he was not long after released and made a Iudge carrying with him this character of honesty That he was willing to lay down his preferment at the King's feet and be trod upon by the growing power of Buckingham rather than prosecute his Patron Somerset that had advanced him as his Predecessor Bacon had spitefully done his But whether that Dialogue betwixt Buckingham and Yelverton in the Tower mentioned in our King's Court have any thing of Truth cannot be asserted here Buckingham being not arrived yet to the Meridian height of his Greatness though the King afterwards had cause enough to be jealous of his Actions But now comes the old Iustice Sir Francis Michell to his Censure and the crime he had committed arguing a base spirit he is fitted with as suitable a punishment First he is degraded with all the ceremonies of debasement but that being most proper to his nature he was but eased of a burthen his mind suffered not but then his kecksie carkass was made to ride Renvers with his face to the horse tail with a pâ—per on his breast and back that pointed at the foulness of the cause through the whole City suffering under the scorn and contempt of Boys and rabble of the people besides the squeezing of him by fine and confinement to prison that he might never be more capable of mischief The same sentence had Sir Giles Mompesson but he was so provident as not to be found to pay it in his person though he paid it in his purse Some others also their Instruments though not so sharply dealt with had great mulcts laid upon them according to their demerit and so this Gangrene was healed up 〈…〉 QVI POSTQVAM OMNIA NATVRALIS SAPIENTIAE ET CIVILIS ARCANA EVOLVISSET NATVRAE DECRETVM EXPLEVIT COMPOSITA SOLVANTVR AN DNI M.D C. XXVI AETAT LXVI TANTI VIRI MEM THOMAS MEAVTYS SVPERSTITIS CVLTOR DEFVNCTI ADMIRATOR H. P. This poor Gentleman mounted above pity fell down below it His Tongue that was the glory of his time for Eloquence that tuned so many sweet Harrangues was like a forsaken Harp hung upon the Willows whilst the waters of affliction overflowed the banks And now his high-flying Orations are humbled to Supplications and thus he throws himself and Cause at the feet of his Iudges before he was condemned To the Right Honourable the Lords of the Parliament in the Upper House assembled The humble Submission and Supplication of the Lord Chancellor May it please your Lordships I Shall humbly crave at your hands a benign interpretation of that which I shall now write for words that come from wasted spirits and oppressed minds are more safe in being deposited to a noble construction than being circled with any reserved caution This being moved and as I hope obtained of your Lordships as a protection to all that I shall say I shall go on but with a very strange Entrance as may seem to your Lordships at first for in the midst of a State of as great affliction as I think a mortal man can endure Honour being above Life I shall begin with the professing of gladness in somethings The first is That hereafter the greatness of a Iudge or Magistrate shall be no sanctuary or protection to him against guiltiness which is the beginning of a golden work The next That after this Example it is like that Iudges will fly from any thing in the likeness of Corruption though it were at a great distance as from a Serpent Which tends to the purging of the Courts of Iustice and reducing them to their true honour and splendor And in these two Points God is my witness though it be my fortune to be the Anvil upon which these two effects are broken and wrought I take no small comfort But to pass from the motions of my heart whereof of God is my Iudge to the merits of my cause whereof your Lordships are Iudges under God and his Lieutenant I do understand there hath been heretofore expected from me some justification and therefore I have chosen one only justification instead of all others out of the justification of Iob. For after the clear submission and confession which I shall now make
pay him with his Spanish Sarcasms and Scoffs saying My Lord I wish you a good Easter And you my Lord replied the Chancellor a good Passover For he could neither close with his English Buffoonry nor his Spanish Treaty which Gondemar knew though he was so wise as publickly to oppose neither In fine he was a fit Iewel to have beautified and adorned a flourishing Kingdom if his flaws had not disgraced the lustre that should have set him off William Viscount Sayand Sealem of the Court of Wardes etc Are to be sould by Iohn Hinde In this very time of Parliament when the King carried all things with a full sail the Pilots of the Commonwealth had an eye to the dangers that lay in the way for in both Houses the King had a strong Party especially in the House of Lords All the Courtiers and most of the Bishops steer'd by his Compass and the Princes presence who was a constant Member did cast an awe among many of them yet there were some gallant Spirits that aimed at the publick Liberty more then their own interest If any thing were spoken in the House that did in the least reflect upon the Government or touch as the Courtiers thought that Noli me tangere the Prerogative those that moved in it were snapt up by them though many times they met with stout encounters at their own Weapon among which the Principal were Henry Earl of Oxford Henry Earl of Southampton Robert Earl of Essex Robert Earl of Warwick the Lord Say the Lord Spencer and divers others that supported the Old English Honour and would not let it fall to the ground Oxford was of no reputation in his youth being very debauched and riotous and having no means maintained it by fordid and unworthy ways for his Father hopeless of Heirs in discontent with his Wife squandred away a Princely Estate but when she and his great Fortune were both gone he married a young Lady of the ancient family of the Trenthams by whom he had this young Lord and two Daughters she having a fortune of her own and industry with it after her Husband's death married her Daughters into two noble Families the Earl of Mountgomery married the one and the Lord Norris after Earl of Berk-shire married the other And finding her Son hopeless let him run his swing till he grew weary of it and thinking he could not be worse in other Countries than he had been in his own she sent him to travel to try if change of Air would change his Humour He was not abroad in France and Italy above three years and the freedoms and extravagancies there that are able to betray and insnare the greatest modesties put such a Bridle upon his inordinateness that look how much before he was decried for a mean and poor spirit so much had his noble and gallant comportment there gained that he came over refined in every esteem and such a Valuation was set upon his parts and merit that he married the Lady Diana Cecil Daughter to the Earl of Exeter one of the most eminent Beauties and Fortunes of the time Southampton though he were one of the King 's Privy Councel yet was he no great Courtier Salisbury kept him at a bay pinched him so by reason of his relation to old Essex that he never flourished much in his time nor was his spirit after him so smooth shod as to go always the Court pace but that now and then he would make a Carrier that was not very acceptable to them for he carried his business closely and slily and was rather an Adviser than an Actor Essex had ever an honest Heart and though Nature had not given him Eloquence he had a strong reason that did express him better his Countenance to those that knew him not appeared somewhat stern and solemn to intimates affable and gentle to the Females obligingly courteous and though unfortunate in some yet highly respected of most happily to vindicate the Vertue of the Sex The King never affected him whether from the bent of his Natural inclination to effeminate faces or whether from that instinct or secret Prediction that Divine fate often imprints in the apprehension whereby he did fore-see in him as it were a hand raised up against his Posterity may be a Notation not a determination But the King never liked him nor could he close with the Court. Warwick though he had all those excellent indowments of Body and fortune that gives splendor to a glorious Court yet he used it but as his Recreation for his Spirit aimed at more publick adventures planting Colonies in the Western World rather than himself in the King's favour his Brother Sir Henry Rich about this time made Baâ—on of Kensington and he had been in their youths two emulous Corrivals in the publick affections the one's browness being accounted a lovely sweetness transcending most men the other 's features and pleasant aspect equalled the most beautiful Women the younger having all the Dimensions of a Courtier laid all the Stock of his Fortune upon that Soil which after some years Patience came up with increase but the Elder could not so stoop to observances and thereby became his own Supporter Saye and Seale was a seriously subtil Peece and always averse to the Court ways something out of pertinaciousness his Temper and Constitution ballancing him altogether on that Side which was contrary to the Wind so that he seldom tackt about or went upright though he kept his Course steady in his own way a long time yet it appeared afterwards when the harshness of the humour was a little allayed by the sweet Refreshments of Court favours that those stern Comportments supposed natural might be mitigated and that indomitable Spirits by gentle usage may be tamed and brought to obedience Robert Earle of Warwicke and Lord Rich of Leeze etc. Henry Earle of Holland Baron of Kensington etc. â—â—ulâ— by Ruâ—â—â—â— Pâ—ake There were many other noble Patriots concentrique with these which like Jewels should be preserved and kept in the Cabinet of every man's memory being Ornaments for Posterity to put on but their Characters would make the line too long and the Bracelet too big to adorn this Story About this time Spencer was speaking something in the House that their great Ancestors did which displeased Arundel and he cuts him off short saying My Lord when these things you speak of were doing your Ancestors were keeping sheep twitting him with his Flocks which he took delight in Spencer instantly replied When my Ancestors as you say were keeping sheep your Ancestors were plotting Treason This hit Arundel home and it grew to some heat in the House whereupon they were separated and commanded both out of the House and the Lords began to consider of the offence There was much bandying by the Court Party to excuse the Earl of Arundel but the heat and rash part of it beginning with him laying such a brand upon a
but what is their great Errand to get Money If they touch upon miscarriage in Government it disparages him to his people for now the inside of his Copses are well grown again If upon Religion he knows well enough how to order that if the Treaty with Spain goes on And for the affairs of State he seems to imply as if there were some hidden and secret Art in those Mysteries of King-craft that the Parliaments apprehension cannot reach For who can have wisdom saith he to judge of things CAESAR BORGIA VALENtiorum Dux Cum pater ad summos Romae esset vectus honores Borgaei toto Praesulvt orbe foret Purpuraei donat gnato huic insigne galèri Quod tamen hoc tantum respuit ille decus Cum ferabella sequi mallet Veneremâ— nefandam Et sratrâ—m è â—ediâ— tolleret suum of that Nature but those that are traded in them Every man in his Profession So the Priests by their old Oracles did strive to keep the World in ignorance as the Romish Factors do now Whereas the true way of Treaties is with Christian not Machiavelian policy This we require this answer we expect you shall have this Retribution from Us. If you go about to cozen and cheat Us by delays and spin out time for ends such Syrens must not be listened after Every State must stand upon the foundation of its own Reason and Power and not build Castles of paper Hopes upon deceitful promises unless there be such redundant Causes of dependency upon them as it is impossible to subsist without them It was observed by Comines that in all Treaties betwixt the English and the French the English ever had the worst but in all Wars and Conflicts the English had the better intimating that Subtilâ—y may deceive but plain down-right Honesty is best and will prevail Falsness is fit for such spirits as Pope Alexander or his Nephew Caesar Borgia Scipio though a Heathen in his pactions with Spain and Carthage scorned it and the old Roman Senate were so Gallant as to rebuke Lucius Marcius their Ambassador and General because in the managing of his Wars and Treaties with Perseus King of Macedon he went about by subtilties to circumvent him And now an Ambassador as one saith lyes abroad Reipublicae causa for the good of his Countrey which tends rather to the hurt of it But now they find that the King would only make Merchandize of the Common-wealth yet Merchants look for their Money again with advantage and therefore their Counsel in disposing it may be well spared But the Parliament it they raise Money from the People which is never to be repayed there is good reason they should know not only to what purpose it is levied but how prudently and sitly laid out otherwise as the King tells them in the comparison of the Robber though in relation to his Prerogative if they should be summoned to levy Money of the people without consideration of what it is for or how it shall be disposed for the good of the Kingdom they may very well say and protest That they meant not to take it from them so that is not to rob them of it But the King's necessities must come under the Common Emergencies which he would not have known and what will one Subsidy without fifteens do The Protestants want in the Palatinate so doth he in England But he had lately a great assistance from his People never King of England found greater love as he saith of himself yet he wants still and would have supply for it under the notion of a War They must consider what Money is fit what Foot what Horse necessary but they must not know for what All that they can imagine is that the King wants Money for his Favourite Buckingham and his kindred to furnish them against Christmas for feasting gaming and bravery the three main pillars of the Times licentiousness raised up to a stupendious and excessive height or to send out his Ambassadors or help his indigent and expensive Courtiers and then the Wars are ended for Want is a great War But if the good of the Kingdom the establishment of Religion the happiness of the King and his Posterity be not fit Themes for them to discourse of why are they called The late Queen whose memory will be for ever famous by the King 's own relation liked the Parliaments Petition well when they humbly besought her to marry because they did not prescribe her place and person but left that to her Election if they had done otherwise She would have thought it presumption in them The King thinks it presumption in the Parliament humbly to beseech him for the good of Religion to permit his Son to marry with a Protestant Princess if they had fixt upon place or person he would have thought it High Treason So many degrees high was the King's spirit mounted above a Woman's to humble Subjects and so many degrees lower then Hers was his Spirit to daring Enemies Some of these things were publickly discoursed of among them in the House and other-some muttered and talkt of in private for full breasts will find vent but the main business that the Commons insisted on was the King's incroachment upon their Liberties debarring them freedom of speech in Parliament which was a Natural Reasonable and uncontroul'd immunity as long as they kept themselves within the limits of their duty which the House was to be the sole judge of And who can tax any particular Member with miscarriages that way that the house hath not Censured hitherto for now the heat is but new broke in among them and this liberty of speech stuck most with them for if any man should speak any thing to displease the King though it tended never so much to the good of the Kingdom it might be termed insolent behaviour and be liable to punishment after Parliament if not then as the King threatens in his Letter which carried such a Terror and over-awing with it that they resolved to give over all business left they should offend Which the King hearing of writes again to his Secretary Calvert and the Speaker to take off the edge of those sharp expressions he used in his Letters thinking to cool the heat among them But before this heat was in the House of Commons the Lords began to consider how cheap they were made by the multitude of Irish and Scotch Earls and Viscounts the King had accumulated not the Natives of those Kingdoms but private English Gentlemen who had procured and assumed those Titles to perch above the English Baronry to their great regret and dishonour And after some debate and canvassing in it they resolved That though they could not debar the King from making such swarms of Nobles with Outlandish Titles yet they would let him know what prejudice it was to them and if it produced no other good effect the King might at least see they took offence and
by the Text of Scripture free both the Doctrine and the Discipline of the Church of England from the aspersions of either adversary especially where the Auditory is Suspected to be tainted with the One or the other infection 6. Lastly that the Arch-Bishops and Bishops of the Kingdom whom his Majesty hath good cause to blame for this former remissness be more wary and choice in their licensing of Preachers and revoke all Grants made to any Chancellor Official or Commissary to pass Licences in this kind And that all the Lecturers throughout the Kingdom of England a new Body severed from the ancient Clergy as being neither Parsons Vicars nor Curates be licensed henceforward in the Court of Faculties but only from a Recommendation of the Party from the Bishop of the Diocess under his hand and seal with a Fiat from the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury a Confirmation under the great Seal of England And that such as do transgress any one of these Directions be suspended by the Bishop of the Diocess or in his default by the Arch-Bishop of the Province ab officio beneficio for a Year and a Day until his Majesty by the advice of the next Convocation shall prescribe some further punishment The Directions the Archbishop recommended to his several Diocesans that they might be put in execution with caution And then may be observed that the King's affections tended to the peaceable comportment of his people that both Papist and Puritan might have a quiet being which preponderation of His puts them in Aequi-librio nay the Papist was in the prime Scale But this new thing called a Lecturer he could by no means endure unless he past through all the Briers of his several Courts to the Broad Seal which was a kind of pungent Ordeal Tryal to which he must put his Teste me ipso and then it was Orthodox so that though Lecturers were not absolutely forbidden yet the charge and trouble to come to it made the way inaccessible Preachers by an Order of Star-chamber in Heaven were first licensed with an Ite praedicate before Henry the Eighth's time and certainly they have a great Seal from thence for what they do Therefore it behoves them to take heed what they say left that Spirit they receive Directions from bind them not up But this Animosity of the King 's against Puritans was thought to be fomented by the Papists whose Agent Bishop Laud was suspected to be though in Religion he had a Motley form by himself and would never as a Priest told me plainly in Flanders bring his neck under the obedience of the Roman Yoak though he might stickle for the grandure of the Clergy And now he began to be Buckingham's Confessor as he expresseth in his own Notes and wore the Court Livery though the King had a sufficient character of him and was pleased with Asseveration to protest his incentive Spirit should be kept under that the flame should not break out by any Preferment from him But that was now forgotten and he crept so into favour that he was thought to be the Bellows that blew these Fires For the Papists used all the Artifices they could to make a breach between the King and his People that they might enter at the same for their own Ends which to accomplish they slily close with the chief ministers of State to put the King upon all his Projects and Monopolies displeasing to the people that they might the more Alienate their Affections from him Sowing their seeds of Division also betwixt Puritan and Protestant so that like the second Commandment they quite exclude the Protestant For all those were Puritans with this high-grown-Arminian-popish party that held in judgment the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches or in practice live according to the Doctrine publickly taught in the Church of England And they attribute the name of Protestant 1. To such Papists as either out of policy or by popish indulgence hold outward Communion with the Church of England 2. To such Protestants as were either tainted with or inclinable to their opinions 3. To indifferent Men who imbrace always that Religion that shall be commanded by Authority Or 4. To such Neutrals as care for no Religion but such as stands with their own liking so that they allow the Church of England the Refuse both of their Religion and Ours Then they strive to make a Division of Regians and Republicans The Regians are the great Dependents upon the Crown both in Church and State who swell up the Prerogative preaching and distilling into the King the Almightiness of his power That all that the People hath is the King 's and that it is by his mercy they have a bare empty Being And this hoisting up of the King they knew would stir up the Republicans to oppose him in his Designs by which they pinch as the King thinks his Prerogative feeding a strife betwixt Law and Prerogative whereby they escape the Dint of both and hope the fire they kindle will break out at last to consume their Adversaries That these things were acted and fomented by Papists was very probable for they were great Sticklers about the Court and Council-Table But it was too apparent that some of the Clergy to make their way the smoother to their wished end began so to adore the King that he could not be named but more reverence was done to it than to the Name of God And the Iudges in their itinerant Circuits the more to enslave the people to Obedience being to speak of the King would give him such Sacred and Oraculous Titles as if their advancement to higher places must necessarily be laid upon the foundation of the peoples debasement On the other side The well affected to Religion that knew no other inclination than the Dictates of their own Reason experiences of former times and the constant practices of the Romanists for propagating their own designs did by their writings and discourses strive to warm the King 's cold temper and put fresh spirits into his chilled veins shewing the Tyranny of the incroaching Monarchy of the House of Austria who was Rome's great Factor and how just and secure the opposing of such a growing power will be That no Sword is so sharp nor Arm 's so strong as those that are cemented with true Religion The security of Conscience grounded upon the Word of Truth being not only a Bulwark to defend but the best Engin to oppose Idolatry and Ambition Thus stood the Kingdom divided in it self But as the King strove after this Rupture betwixt him and the Parliament to settle things at home and keep his people in obedience so he was as active abroad to keep up his own Reputation For he made a full account to salve up all these miscarriages by the intended Match with Spain that his people might see he could discern further into the intrinsical matters of State than they and so make the
money from the people or for what other intention is unknown But the very next day he sends this further Direction by Endimion Porter RIght Trusty c. We have given you certain Instructions signed with Our hand to direct you how to express unto the King of Spain the feeling We have of the Dishonour put upon Us by the Emperour through Our Trust and Confidence in that King's Promises wherein you have Order to come away without further delay in case you receive not Satisfaction to your Demands in such sort as We have Commanded you to propound them Nevertheless We are to put you in remembrance of that which We have heretofore told you in case a Rupture happen between the King of Spain and Us that We would be glad to manage it at Our best advantage And therefore however you do not find the Satisfaction which We in those Instructions crave from the King of Spain and have Reason to expect yet would We not have your instantly come away upon it but advertise Us first letting Us know privately if you find such cause that there is no good to be done nor no Satisfaction as you judge intended Us though Publikely and Outwardly you give out the contrary that We may make use thereof with Our People in Parliament as We shall hold best for Our Service And this seâ— you do notwithstanding any thing in your other Instructions to the contrary Dated 4. Octob. 1622. The right Honorable John Digby Earle of Bristol Baron of Shirborne Vice Chamberlaine to his Mar. and one of the Lords of his Maiesties most Honorable privy Counsell and Embassador extraordinary to the high and Mightie Philip the fourth king of Spaine Are to be Souto by William Peake IOANNES THERCLAES Comes de Tilli While they were thus Wire-drawing time spun out Manheim the chief Strength and Fortress in the Palatinate was taken by Tilly the Emperour's General whereof Sir Horatio Vere was Commander surrendred upon honourable Conditions having neither strength of Men or means to resist an Enemy Heidelberg before it as the King expressed was taken by Assault Sir Gerard Herbert the Commander of the Castle slain after he had repulsed the Enemy from the Assault breaking six Pikes upon them with his own hand And now Tilly Winter comeing on greedy to finish his work sits down before Frankendale whereof Major Barrowes had the Command a man of as much valour and experience as Time the Director and Spirit the Actor could make a man capable of But all this and the Strength of the Town to boot could not have protected them their Wants being stronger than their Enemy if Tilly had not been drowned up in his Trenches which forced his remove And though Our King said in his last Answer to the Parliament's Petition That the Enemy would have swallowed up his Forces in the Palatinate in eight daies if my Lord Digby had not succoured it yet the weakest of the three Places which is Heidelberg was not taken in a moment for Tilly in Iune last set down before it and was constrained to raise his Siege being not strong enough and coming again with a greater Power in the end of Iuly following he was there above two moneths before he took so much as any of their Out-Works And Manheim and Frankendale are two such strong Holds that if they had been well furnished with Men and Provisions they might have stood out against Tilly nay the great Turk as well if not better than Vienna the Imperial City As soon as the King had notice of the taking of Manheim he gives Bristol intimation of it and was very well satisfied of the King of Spain's good intentions for the Relief of it though Order sent to the Infanta arrived not there till the Town was surrendred Which was the old Spanish plot of Philip the Second to get Portugal into his hand wherein he cheated the Pope himself delaying his solicitations by his Legate Cardinal Riario for Don Antonio Bastard of Portugal with specious and pleasing entertainments till he had gotten the Castle of St. Iulians the greatest strength of the Kingdom then besieged by him into his power And yet our King looked upon this Apparition as Real and thanked the King of Spain for the good he never intended And now the Articles of Marriage that had been long hatching flew up and down from hand to hand The French Historians mention them so doth Mr. Pryn in his hidden Works of darkness as they were found among the Lord Cottington's Papers These came to me from the Nest and I have kept them till this time and comparing them with other Copies there is scarce a feather amiss Nor should they have pestered this paper but to shew what great pains was taken to little purpose what Huge pretences shouldred in to make way for the Spanish Designs which at last dwindled to nothing The Articles are these 1. THat the Marriage be made by Dispensation of the Pope but that to be procured by the endeavour of the King of Spain 2. That the Marriage be once celebrated in Spain and Ratified in England in form following In the morning after the most gracious Infanta hath ended her Devotions in the Chappel She and the most excellent Prince Charles shall meet in the King's Chappel or in some other Room of the Palace where it shall seem most expedient and there shall be read all the Procurations by Virtue whereof the Marriage was celebrated in Spain And as well the most excellent Prince as the most excellent Infanta shall ratifie the said Marriage celebrated in Spain with all Solemnity necessary to such an Act so as no Ceremony or other thing intervene which shall be contrary to the Roman-Catholik-Apostolik-Religion 3. That the Gracious Infanta shall take with Her such Servants and Family as are convenient for her service which Family and all Persons to her belonging shall be chosen and nominated by the Catholik King so as he nominate no Servant which is Vassail to the King of Great Britain without his will and consent 4. That as well the most gracious Lady Infanta as all her Servants and Family shall have free use and publique exercise of the Roman Catholike Religion in manner and form as is beneath Capitulated 5. That she shall have an Oratory and decent Chappel in her Palace where at the pleasure of the most Gracious Infanta Masses may be celebrated which Oratory or Chappel shall be adorned with such decencie as shall seem convenient for the most gracious Infanta with a publike Church in London c. 6. That the Men-servants and Maid-servants of the most Gracious Infanta and their Servants Children and Descendents and all their Families of what sort soever serving her Highness may be freely Catholiks 7. That the most gracious Infanta her Servants and Family may be freely Catholiks in form following 8. That the most gracious Infanta may have in her Palace her Oratory and Chappel
well cleared on both sides their Design which was the Prince's Perversion might mature and ripen For the Earl of Bristol confessed afterwards That it was a general received Opinion in the Spanish Court that the Prince came thither with intention to be a Roman Catholike And Gondemar pressed Bristol not to hinder so pious a work assuring him they had the Duke of Buckingham's assistance therein And it was evident enough their hopes were great by the Pope's letter to the Bishop of Conchen Inquisitor general in Spain Wherein he excites him not to slip the Opportunity providence had put into his hand of extending his Piety to the outtermost Nations The Prince of England being now in the Court of Spain that glorious Temple as it were that hath been a Bulwark to the Pontifical Authority and an Academy for propogation of Religion he desires he may not stay there in vain but that some of the impressions of the Piety of so many Catholick Kings as have lived there may be imprinted on him that he may be won with all sweetness as many of his noble Ancestors have been who have submitted their Crowned heads and Imperiall power to the Roman Obedience And to his glorious Victory and Eternal GREGORIVS XV alexander Luaouisuis Bononien creat die 9. Februarâ— an 1621. Sedit an 2. me â—s S. Obâ—t die 8. Iulij an 1623 Vac Triumph of Celestial Beatitudes the Treasures of Kings and Legions of Souldiers cannot contribute but the Weapons of Light that must come from Heaven whose Splendor inlightning the Prince's Eyes shall dazleâ— his Errors and establish his mind in meekness And he charges the Bishop and all his Fraternity to use the best strength and industry they can to this purpose So that the Prince was continually laid at by the insinuating Orations of cunning Iesuits the fained and cousening Miracles of reclused Holiness the Splendid and Specious Solemnities of their Formal Processions the rare and admirable Pictures of their reputed Saints besides many other painted devices and subtle Artifices brooded among them And the Pope used all the Rhetorick of his Cabalistical Consistory and Holy Chair to charm him to his Obedience as may be seen by this Letter which he writ to him himself MOst Noble Prince Health and Light of Divine Grace For asmuch as Great Britain hath always been fruitful in Vertues and Men of Merit having filled the one and the other World with the Glory of Her Renown She doth also very often attract the thoughts of the Holy Apostolical Chair to the consideration of her praises And indeed the Church was but then in her Infancy when the King of Kings did choose her for his Inheritance and so affectionately that it is thought the Roman Eagles prevailed not so much as the Banner of the Cross. Besides that many of her Kings instructed in the Knowledg of the true Salvation have preferred the Cross before the Royal Scepter and the Discipline of Religion before Covetousness leaving Examples of Piety to other Nations and to the Ages yet to come so as having Merited the principal and chief Places of Blessedness in Heaven they have obtained on Earth the Triumphant Ornaments of true Holiness And although now the State of the English Church be altered yet we see the Court of Great Britain adorned and furnished with Moral Vertues which might serve to support the Charity that We bear unto Her and be an Ornament to the name of Christianity if withal She could have for her defence and Protection the Orthodox and Catholike Truth Wherefore by how much the Glory of your most Noble Father and the apprehension of your Royal Disposition delights Us with so much more Zeal We desire that the Gates of the Heavenly Kingdom might be opened unto you and that you might purchase to your self the Love of the Universal Church Moreover it being Certain that Gregory the Great of most blessed Memory hath introduced to the English people and taught their Kings the law of the Gospel and the respect to Apostolical Authority We as inferior to him in Holiness and Virtue but equal in Name and Degree of Dignity it is very reasonable that We following his blessed Steps should endeavour the Salvation of those Provinces especially at this time when your Happy Design most Noble Prince elevates Us to the Hope of an extraordinary advantage And as you have taken a Iourney into Spain to the Catholike King with desire to allye your Self to the House of Austria so We do commend your Design and indeed do testifie openly in this present Business That you are he that takes principal Care of our Prelacy For seeing that you desire to take in Marriage the Daughter of Spain We may easily from thence conjecture That the ancient seeds of Christian Piety which have so happily flourished in the Hearts of the Kings of Great Britain May God prospering them revive again in your Soul And indeed it is not to be believed that he that loves such an alliance should hate the Catholike Religion and delight to oppress the Holy Chair To that purpose We have commanded to make continually most humble Prayers to the Father of Lights That he would be pleased to put you as a fair Flower of Christendom and the onely Hope of Great Britain in possession of that most noble Heritage that your Ancestors have purchased for you to defend the Authority of the Soveraign High Priest and to sight against the Monsters of Heresie Remember the dayes of old enquire of your Fathers and they will tell you the Way that leads to Heaven and what way Temporal Princes have taken to gain an Eternal Kingdom Behold the Gates of Heaven opened the most holy Kings of England who came from England to Rome accompanied with Angels did come to Honour and do Homage to the Lord of Lords and to the Prince of the Apostles in the Apostolical Chair their Actions and Examples being as so many Voices of God speaking and exhorting you to follow the course of the Lives of those to whose Empire you shall one day attain Great Brittaine is thy Birth right but the Earth Liâ—e then and conquer till victorious warre stoopes to the Vertues which exceede thy Birth Make thy Rule endles as thy Vertues are This Letter of the Pope's expresses not only the sleek and smooth waies that Soul-merchant takes to purchase his Proselytes but the end he proposes to himself which is to bring them under the Roman Obedience otherwise whatsoever they do or profess is Heresie And to build up the Towers of this great Babel the name of the most High God is brought down among them and used as a Master Builder Every Profession layes that name as a Foundation though the Superstructure be but straw and stubble of Hypocrisie which a whirl-wind shall scatter and the time is coming that her Lovers shall be destroyed and fiery-cloven tongues shall confound their Language The Prince was not slack in answering this
Canterbury knowing that a Toleration was to be admitted though he stood tottering in the King's Favour and had the Badg of a Puritan clapt upon him thought it better to discharge his Conscience though he hazarded all rather than be silent in such a Cause where the Glory of God and the Good of the Kingdom were so higly concerned Therefore he writes this letter to the King May it please your Majesty I Have been too long silent and am afraid by my Silence I have neglected the Duty of the Place it hath pleased God to call me unto and your Majesty to place me in And now I humbly crave leave I may discharge my Conscience towards God and my Duty to your Majesty And therefore I beseech your Majesty give me leave freely to deliver my self and then let your Majesty do with me what you please Your Majesty hath propounded a Toleration of Religion I beseech you Sir take into your consideration what the Act is next what the consequence may be By your Act you labour to set up that most Damnable and Heretical Doctrine of the Church of Rome the Whore of Babylon How Hateful will it be to God and grievous unto your good Subjects the true Professors of the Gospel that your Majesty who hath often disputed and learnedly written against those wicked Heresies should now shew your self a Patron of those Doctrines which your Pen hath told the World and your Conscience tels your Self are Superstitious Idolatrous and Detestable Add hereunto what you have done in sending the Prince into Spain without the consent of your Council the Privity and Approbation of your People And though Sir you have a large Interest in the Prince as the Son of your Flesh yet hath the people a greater as the Son of the Kingdom upon whom next after your Majesty their Eyes are fixed and Welfare depends And so tenderly is his going apprehended as believe it Sir however his return may be safe yet the drawers of him to that Action so dangerous to himself to desperate to the Kingdom will not pass away unquestioned and unpunished Besides this Toleration which you endeavour to set up by Proclamation cannot be done without a Parliament unless your Majesty would let your Subjects see That you will take unto your self a liberty to throw down the Laws of the Land at your Pleasure What dreadful Consequence these things may draw after them I beseech your Majesty to consider And above all lest by this Toleration and discontinuance of the true profession of the Gospel whereby God hath blessed us and under which this Kingdom hath for many years flourished your Majesty do not draw upon the Kingdom in general and your Self in particular God's heavy Wrath and Indignation Thus in discharge of my Duty towards God to your Majesty and the place of my Calling I have taken humble Boldness to deliver my Conscience And now Sir do with me what you please Thus did our Solomon in his latter time though he had fought with the Beasts at Ephesus as one saith of him incline a little too much to the Beast Yet he made his tale so good to the Archbishop of Canterbury what reservations soever he had that he wrought upon the good old man afterwards in the Conclusion of the work to set his Hand as a Witness to the Articles And his desires were so heightned to the Heats of Spain which boyl'd him to such a Distemper that he would listen to nothing and almost yield to any thing rather than not to enjoy his own Humour Divers of his intimate Council affecting Popery were not slack to urge him to a Toleration and many Arguments were used inciting to it As that Catholicks were the King 's best and most peaceable Subjects the Puritans being the only Sticklers and the greatest Disturbers of the Royal peace trenching too boldly upon the Prerogative and striving to lessen the Kingly power But if the King had occasion to make use of the Catholicks he should find them more faithful to him than those that are ever contesting with him And why should not Catholicks with as much safety be permitted in England as the Protestants are in France That their Religion was full of Love and Charity where they could enjoy it with freedom and where Charity layes the Foundation the upper Building must needs be spiritual But these Arguments were answered and many reasons alledged against them proving the Nature of the Protestant Religion to be Compatible with the Nature of the Politick Laws of any State of what Religion soever Because it teacheth that the Government of any State whether Monarchial or Aristocratical is Supream within it self and not subordinate to any power without so that the Knot of Allegiance thereunto is so firmly tied that no Humane power can unloose or dissolve it Whereas on the contrary the Roman Religion acknowledging a Supremacy in another above that power which swayeth the State whereof they are Members must consequently hold that one stroke of that Supreme power is able to unsinew and cut in sunder all the Bonds which ty them to the Subordinate and Dependent Authority And therefore can ill accord with the Allegiance which Subjects owe to a Prince of their own Religion which makes Papists intolerable in a Protestant Common-wealth For what Faith can a Prince or People expect from them whose Tenet is That no Faith is to be held with Hereticks That the Protestants in France had merited better there than the Papists had done in England the one by their Loyalties to their lawful King having ransomed that Kingdom with their Bloods in the Pangs of her desperate Agonies from the Yoak of an Usurper within and the Tyranny of a Forain Scepter without The other seeking to write their Disloyalties in the Heart-Blood of the Princes and best Subjects of this Kingdom That the Number and Quality of the Professors of these different Religions in either Kingdom is to be observed For in France the Number of the Protestants were so great that a Toleration did not make them but found them a Considerable Party so strong as they could not have been suppressed without endangering the Kingdom But a Toleration in England would not find but form the Papists to be a considerable party witness their encrease by this late Connivency a thing which ought mainly to be avoided For the distraction of a State into several powerfull parties is alwaies weakning and often proveth the utter ruine thereof These thing were laid open to the King but all were waved by the King of Spain's Offering His engagement to the Pope by oath That he and the Prince his son should observe and keep the Articles stipulated betwixt them did exceedingly affect him And the Articles now coming to close up all they were ingrossed with a long preamble Declaring to all the World the much desired Union betwixt him and the King of Spain by the marriage of his son to
Little Vanity of this great Dutchess with your Patience may yet croud in this Story She was a Woman greedy of Fame and loved to keep great State with little Cost For being much visited by all the Great ones she had her formality of Officers and Gentlemen that gave attendance and this advantage that none ever eat with her Yet all the Tables in the Hall were spread as if there had been Meat and men to furnish them but before eating time the house being voided the Linnen returned into their folds again and all her people grased on some few dishes Yet whether her Actions came into Fames fingring her Gifts were suitable to the greatness of her Mind For the Queen of Bohemia to the Christning of whose Child she was a Witness had some taste of them And being blowing up by Admiration for this Bounty either by her own design to magnifie her Merit or by others in Mockery to magnifie her Vanity huge Inventories of Massie Plate went up and down from hand to hand that she had given that Queen and most believed it yet they were but Paper presents those Inventories had an non est inventus at the Hague they saw the Shell the Inventory but never found the Kernel the Plate Such difference there is betwixt solid worth and Airy-paper-Greatness And it is hoped these sleight intermixtures will be no great transgression because long serious things do dull the Fancy The King having digested his sudain loss of the Duke of Richmond and fitted himself to make his mind known to his people in Parliament he went to the House the nineteenth as is said and opened himself to them to this effect To testifie to the World how far my mind hath been from esohewing to assemble a Parliament and how willing I have been upon all Occasions to have the advice of my people I have at this present called you to approve unto you the earnest desire I have ever had and still have to deserve the love of my people by improving your trust and communicating unto you a Matter of as great Consequence as ever King imparted to his people to have their advice and Counsel in I shall say unto you as Christ said to the Church I am your Husband and you are my Spouse And as it is the Part of a good Husband to procure and maintain the love of his wife which he usually doth by often visiting her and upon extraordinary Occasions communicating the secrets of his affairs unto her and by all gentle and affable wayes to gain her Love So in the administration of Government I desire to carry my self towards my People There are two wayes by which a King may shew his love to his People One is by a constant administration of Iustice according to the Laws established the other is by communicating himself to his People in their Representative the Parliament For the first I know there 's no particular Man of you that hath not injoyed the Blessing and Benefit of it which I will say nothing of because you have been all Witness of it for who hath not found the fruits of it If he considers the Peace which my Kingdomes injoy in the midst of the Miseries our Neighbours are afflicted with And though I cannot say my Government hath been without Error yet this I can truly say and will avouch it before God and his Angels That never King governed with a more pure sincerity and uncorrupt Heart than I have done far from all intention and meaning of the least Error or imperfection in my Reign I have assembled you at this time to perform the other part which is duely to impart unto you a Secret and a Matter of as great importance as can to be to my Estate and the Estate of my Children I crave your best and safest advice and Counsel as the Writ whereby you are assembled imports That the King would advise with you in matters concerning his Estate and Dignity And as I have ever indeavoured by this and the like waies to procure and cherish the love of my People towards me So do I hope and fully believe that never any King was more beloved of his People whom you my Lords and Gentlemen do here represent so I would have you truly represent their loves also to me that in you as in a true glass I may perfectly behold it and not as a false glass presents it not at all or otherwise than it is indeed Give me your free and faithful Counsel in this Matter which is that of which you have often heard the Match of my Son Wherein as you may know I have spent much time with great Cost in long Treaty desiring alwaies therein and not without reason hoping to have effected my desires the advancement of my Estate and Children and the general Peace of all Christendom Wherein I have alwaies constantly laboured depending too much upon fair Hopes and Promises But at the earnest instance of my Son I was contented although it was of an extraordinary Nature to send him to prosecute his Desires in Spain and for his more safety I sent Buckingham in whom I ever reposed the most trust of my Person with him with this command to be continually present with him and never leave him till he returned safe again unto me which he performed though not with such effect as I expected yet not altogether without Profit for it taught me this Point of Wisdom that Qui versatur in Universalibus c. is easily deceived and it generally brings nothing to good issue for before any Matter can be fully finished it must be brought to particulars I thought before their going the affairs had been produced to a narrow Point relying upon their general Propositions but when they came to the matter it proved so Raw as if it had been never treated of the Generals giving them easie way to evade and affording them means to avoid the effecting of any thing The Particulars that passed in the Treaty I mean not now to discover unto you the time being too short I referre that to Charles and Buckingham and the Secretaries who shall relate unto you all the Particulars And after that Super totam materiam I desire your best assistance and advice what is best and fittest for me to do for the good of the Common-wealth the advancement of Religion and the good of my Son and my Children of the Palatine And of Our Estate I know you cannot but be sensible considering your Welfare consists in Ours for you shall be sure to have your share in what misery shall befal us therefore I need to urge no further Arguments unto you for your choicest and surest Counsel And I assure you in the faith of a Christian King that it is Res integra presented unto you and that I stand not bound nor any wayes ingaged but remain free to follow what shall be best advised To plant is not sufficient unless like
but dallie with him left a Proxie with Bristol to conclude the Match when the Dispensation came which the Prince forbad him to deliver Bristol nevertheless proceeds and if Gresley had not brought a Revocation of the Proxie from the King over night Bristol had made the Espousalls the next day And alwaies at the end of every point he would look upon the Prince for his approbation and allowance who still as the Duke went on confirmed the same And so Buckingham concluded that if the drawing of us out of Darkness into Light did deserve thanks we all owed it to the Prince who by the Hazard of his Person and by his great care and industry had done this for Us. The Parliament that looked upon the Duke with a Sour Eye for tempting the Prince to so dangerous a journey when they found what excellent effects it had produced forgot the Old Murmurs buzzed against him and with elevated Voices could scarce be contained from acknowledging him The Preserver of the Nation This his discovery is Cryed up every where and who but the Duke is become the Darling of the Multitude So dear then was the Prince unto the People that they tendred his safety as their own and so easily might he have retained his Love if by grasping after Shadows he had not lost the Substance For those people are the soonest deceived that love most to admire The Parliament were but men and could at present see no more than the Duke was pleased to shew them through the flattering glass of this Relation But when Bristol came over and as afterwards he did discover that the Duke carried the Prince purposely into Spain to be the better instructed in Popery That he gave hope to the Spanish Ministers of State of the Prince's Conversion which made them propound far worse Conditions for Religion than had been formerly agreed on That he professed himself a Papist there going to Mass kneeling to and adoring their Sacraments which the Pope being informed of sent the Duke a Bull to perswade and incourage him to pervert the King and Prince with other pernicious Crimes laid to his Charge in the next King's reign as may appear in due time None can blame the People for Mutable affections for when false-hood is so impudent as to hoodwink such an Assembly with the vail that Truth her self is wont to put on who can at an instant discover it But it was a hard Condition for the banished Palatine to have such Mediators as Buckingham Bristol and Weston to make intercession for him the Temper of whose Spirits was well known and which way their affections tended But now the load is all laid upon Bristol though he were at the distance of not being sensible of it yet it was so heavy that most Men thought he would never come to have it taken off But all things were passed over by the Parliament that reflected upon particulars having in their eye the general good of the Kingdom which they strove to manage with advantage And the Treaty of the Marriage with Spain being put into their hands they crushed the brood in the nest advising the King to break the Treaty and proclaim open War with that King Which they did not do suddainly as if they had been eager upon a War but with good advice and deliberate consideration as the most immediate means for the establishment of Religion and setled Peace protesting to assist the King for the regaining of the Palatinate with their lives and fortunes Upon which Declaration and Resolution the King determined to send instantly post into Spain to his Ambassadors to signifie to that King that the Parliament advised him to break off the Treaties and to recover the Palatinate by War and the Post had his Dispatch to that purpose when the King repented him of what he had done and like the Husband how jealous of his Wife writes to Secretary Conway this Letter to impede and delay the Business I doubt not but you have heard what a stinging Petition against the Papists the Lower House have sent to the Higher House this day that they might joyntly present it to me you know my firm Resolution not to make this a War of Religion And seeing I would be loth to be Conny-catcht by my People I pray you stay the Post that is going into Spain till I meet with my Son who will be here to morrow morning Do it upon pretext of some more Letters ye are to send by him and if he should be gone hasten after him to stay him upon some such pretext and let none living know of this as ye love me and before two in the afternoon to morrow you shall without fail hear from me Farewell Apr. 3 1624. By this Letter it appears that the King thought the Petition against Recusants of such high consequence that if he should not give the Parliament a good answer it might make a Rupture with them and therefore he will see further in the Nature of this Petition before he will break with the King of Spain and know more of the Prince his Son's mind happily whether he would yet accept of his Old Mistris or expect a new one Or whether the King feared that the Parliament would not make good their Promises to stand with their lives and fortunes in the Gap when this great Breach was made and so cousen him may be Mystical Conjectures from Mystical Expressions grounded upon the Words of a King Or whether any or all of these like the King's Heart inscrutable are meant in the Letter is not here determined But the King hastens to the House and finding no such terrible things in the Petition the Lords being not so quick in the Resolution of it as the King was in the apprehension of it he stirs not those Waters but sounds the depth of the Parliaments Intentions by propounding his Doubts and requiring a solution to them in order to a War with prudence and caution My Lords and Gentlemen all I have cause first to thank God with my heart and all the faculties of my mind that my speech which I delivered in Parliament hath taken so good effect among you as that with an Unamine consent you have freely and speedily given me your advice in this great Business for which I also thank you all as heartily as I can I also give my particular thanks to the Gentlemen of the lower House for that I hear when some among them would have cast jealousies and doubts between me and my people you presently quelled those Motions which might have hindred the happy agreement I hope to find in this Parliament You give me your advice to break off both the Treaties as well concerning the Match as the Palatinate And now give me leave as an old King to propound my Doubts and hereafter give me your answer First it is true that I who have been all the dayes of my life
or wary in such an Eruption as this so contrary to his Nature as he saith himself a War was a new World to him fearing to lay out by it more than he should receive And in this he was like the Man that when his Master gave great Charge to go and gather up his Rents in the Country and to take a pair of Pistols with him to bring home his Money with the more security After the Master had appointed him to pay so much in one place and so much in another that the Man saw he should not receive so much as he should disburse Bid his Master take his Pistols again he should not use them So the King fearing that when the War was begun there would not be where withal to maintain it Thanked the Parliament for their Advice and he would consider better of it And they seeling the King's Pulse by his expressions resolved now not to let him flag but to keep up the temper of his Spirit that a little thing would make decline again And therefore they seriously settled to their Business and answered his Expectation fully which they presented unto him shortly after in these words to his great Satisfaction Most Gracious Soveraign WE your Majesties most Humble and Loyal Subjects the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament assembled do first render to your Sacred Majesty Our most Dutiful Thanks for that to Our unspeakable Comfort you have vouchsafed to express your Self so well satisfied with Our late Declaration made unto your Majesty of Our general Resolution in pursuit of Our Humble Advice to assist your Majesty in a Parliamentary way with Our Persons and Abilities And whereas your Majesty in your Great Wisdom and Iudgment foreseeing that it will make a deeper impression both in the Enemies of that Cause and in your Friends and Allies if they shall not onely hear of the Cheerful Offers but also see the Real performance of your Subjects towards so great a Work Your Majesty was pleased to descend to a particular Proposition for the advancing of this great Business We therefore in all humbleness most ready and willing to give your Majesty and the whole World an ample Testimony of Our Sincere and Dutiful Intentions herein upon Mature Advice and Deliberation as well of the Weight and Importance of this great Affair as of the present Estate of this your Kingdom the Weal and Safety whereof is in Our Iudgments apparently threatned if your Majesties Resolution for the Dissolving of the Treaties now in question be longer deferred and that Provision for defence of your Realm and aid of your Friends and Allies be not seasonably made have with a Cheerful Consent of all the Commons no one dissenting and with a Full and Cheerful Consent of the Lords Resolved That upon your Majesties publique Declaration for the Dissolution and utter Discharge of both the said Treaties of the Marriage and the Palatinate in pursuit of Our Advice therein and towards the Support of that War which is likely to ensue And more particularly for those four Points proposed by your Majesty Namely for the Defence of this your Realm the Securing of Ireland the assistance of your Neighbours the States of the United Provinces and other your Majesties Friends and Allies and for the setting forth of your Royal Navy We will grant for the present the greatest Aid which ever was given in Parliament That is to say Three intire Subsidies and three Fifteens to be all paid within the compass of one whole Year after your Majestie shall be pleased to make the said Declaration The Money to be paid into the Hands and expended by the Direction of such Committees or Commissioners as hereafter shall be agreed upon at this present Session of Parliament And We most humbly beseech your Majesty to accept of these First Fruits of Our Hearty Oblation dedicated to that Work which We infinitely desire may prosper and be advanced And for the Future to rest confidently assured That We your Loyal and Loving Subjects will never fail in a Parliamentary way to assist your Majestie in so Royal a Design wherein your Own Honour and the Honour of your most Noble Son the Prince the Antient Renown of this Nation the Welfare and very Subsistence of your Noble and Onely Daughter and her Consort and their Posterity the Safety of your Own Kingdom and People and the Prosperity of your Neighbours and Allies are so deeply ingaged The Parliament by this Declaration came up so close to the King that he could make no evasion but rested contented now in his Latter time when the Almonds as it were begun to Blossom upon his head to plunge himself into a War which brought him again to the Parliament to thank them for their Readiness to assist him telling them That he is willing to follow their advice in the Anulling and Breach of these two Treaties They having given enough to begin a War but when the end will be he said God knows Yet he will ingage for himself and his Son his Successour That no means shall be left unused for recovery of the Palatinate And for all his Old Age if it might do any good he would go in person to further the Business But as he is contented to have the Parliament Committees to dispose of the Moneys by their Directions so the Design must not be acted by publique Councels For whether he shall send Two thousand or Ten thousand whether by Sea or Land East or West by Diversion or Invasion upon the Bavarian or the Emperor that must be left to the King And this he did that there might be no jealousies but to smooth every Rub betwixt them And to put it in execution a Council of War is chosen out of the old and long discontinued Militia of Ireland and some others of the Nobility and upon result of their Counsels after some debate it was concluded to send fix thousand men for the present into the Low Countreys to joyn with the States Forces against the King of Spain's mighty Armies under the command of Marquess Spinola that threatned the next Summer to over-run the Netherlands that weakning the Spaniard in Flanders they might have the more free access into Germany The Dissolution of the Treaties with Spain and the preparation for War resounding in every Ear gave such an Allarm to the Spanish Ambassadour the Marquess of Inoiosa that whether out of Truth and Knowledge as he pretended or Malice only cannot be determined But he sent to the King to let him know that the Duke of Buckingham had some dangerous Machination a foot that tended to his Destruction and the best he could expect would be a confinement to a Countrey-house in some Park during his life the Prince being now in full abilities and ripe in Government This Concussion was strong enough to shake an old Building that was of a fearful and tottering Temper especially if he considered how his Mother was
put by her Government to say nothing of Prince Henry but the violence of it did not work because the Operation was somewhat mitigated by the Duke's Protestation of his Innocency For the King at the next Interview saying to him Ah Stenny Stenny which was the Familiar name he alwayes used to him Wilt thou kill me The Duke struck into an Astonishment with the Expression after some little Pause collected himself and with many asseverations strove to justify his Integrity which the good King was willing enough to Believe and Buckingham finding by some discourse that Padre Macestria the Spanish Iesuit had been with the King he had then a large Theme for his Vindication turning all upon the Spanish Iesuitical Malice which proceeded from the ruins of their quashed Hopes And the King knowing Inoiosa and all that Party very bitter against Buckingham and though he did not directly accuse the Prince to be in the Conspiracy with Buckingham yet he reflected upon him for such an attempt could never have been effected without his Privity therefore out of the Bowels of good Nature he did unbelieve it and after Examinations of some Persons the Duke's Intimates and their constant denyal upon oath which they had no good Cause to confess the King was content being loth to think such an Enterprize could be fostred so neer his own Bosom to have the Brat strangled in the Womb. And he presently sent into Spain to desire Iustice of that King against the Ambassadours false Accusation which he said wounded his Son's Honour through Buckingham's side which Sir Walter Aston represented to the King of Spain for Bristol was coming over to justifie his Actions to the Parliament But the Duke of Buckinghams reputation there procured no other Satisfaction than some little check of formality for when Inoiosa was recalled home he was not lessen'd in esteem Thus was this Information waved though there might be some cause to suspect that the great intimacy and Dearness betwixt the Prince and Duke like the conjunction of two dreadful planets could not but portend the production of some very dangerous effect to the old King But the Duke's Reputation though it failed in Spain held firm footing in England for Bristol no sooner appeared but he is clapt up in the Tower Their jugling practices whereof they were Both guilty enough must not yet come to light to disturb the Proceedings in Parliament Bristol had too much of the King's Commission for what he did though he might overshoot himself in what he said which was not now to be discovered Yet the Rigor of that imprisonment would have sounded too loud if he had not had a suddain Release who finding the Duke high mounted yet in power and himself in no Degree to grapple with him was content with Submission to gain his liberty and retire himself to a Country privacy The Lords being now at leisure began to consider of that stinging petition as the King called it against Papists how necessary it was to joyn with the Commons to supplicate the King to take down the pride of their high-flying Hopes that had been long upon the Wing watching for their prey and now they are made to stoop without it And after some Conferences betwixt both Houses about it the Petition was reduced to these two Propositions and presented to the King as two Petitions We your Majestie 's most humble and loyal Subjects the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament do in all humbleness offer unto your Sacred Majesty these two Petitions following 1. That for the more safety of your Realms and better keeping your Subjects in Obedience and other important Reasons of State your Majesty would be pleased by some such course as you shall think fit to give present Order that all the Laws be put in due execution which have been made and do stand in force against Jesuits Seminary Priests and others having taken Orders by authority derived from the See of Rome and generally against all Popish Recusants And as for disarming that it may be according to the Laws and according to former Acts and Directions of State in that Case And yet that it may appear to all the World the Favour and Clemency your Majesty useth towards all your Subjects of what Condition soever And to the intent the Jesuits and Priests now in the Realm may not pretend to be surprized that a speedy and certain may be prefixed by your Majesties Proclamation before which day they shall depart out of this Kingdom and all other your Highness Dominions and neither they nor any other to return or come hither again upon peril of the severest Penalties of the Laws now in force against them And that all your Majesties Subjects may thereby also be admonished not to receive entertain or conceal any of them upon the Penalties and Forfeitures which by the Laws may be imposed on them 2. Seeing We are thus happily delivered from that danger which those Treaties now dissolved and that use which your ill-affected Subjects made thereof would certainly have drawn upon us and yet cannot but foresee and fear lest the like may hereafter happen which would inevitably bring much peril upon your Majesties Kingdoms We are most humble Suters unto your Gracious Majesty to secure the Hearts of your good Subjects by the ingagement of your Royal Word unto them that upon no occasion of Marriage or Treaty or other request in that behalf from any forein Prince or State whatsoever you will take away or slacken the Execution of your Laws against Jesuits Priests and Popish Recusants To which Our humble Petitions proceeding from Our most Loyal and Dutiful affections towards your Majesty Our Care of Our Countries good and our own confident persuasion that these will much advance the Glory of Almighty God the everlasting Honour of your Majesty the Safety of your Kingdoms and the incouragement of all your good Subjects We do most humbly beseech your Majesty to vouchsafe a gracious Answer The King was prepared for the Petition having given his own Resolution the Check at present that whatsoever he might do hereafter yet now he would comply and therefore he sends for both Houses to Whitehall to sweeten them with a gentle answer to this Petition that might take off those sour aspersions that this miscarriage in Government might happily cast upon him And we will not say but his intentions might rove towards the End though he gave too much liberty through a Natural easiness in himself to those that He trusted with Management of the great affairs by evil means to pervert that end which made him guilty of their Actions For where true Piety is not the Director Carelesness as often as Wilfulness carries men out of the way But he had this Principle and made often use of it like ill Tenants when they let things run to ruin to daub all up again when forced to it and find no other Remedy This was the effect of
what he said in his own excuse My Lords and Gentlemen of both Houses I cannot but commend your Zeal in offering this Petition to me yet on the other side I cannot but hold my Self unfortunate that I should be thought to need a Spur to do that which my Conscience and Duty binds me unto What Religion I am of my Books do declare my Profession and Behaviour doth shew and I hope in God I shall never live to be thought otherwise surely I shall never deserve it And for my part I wish it may be written in Marble and remain to Posterity as a mark upon me when I shall swerve from my Religion For he that doth dissemble with God is not to be trusted with Men. My Lords for my part I protest before God That my Heart hath bled when I have heard of the increase of Popery God is my judge it hath been such a great grief to me that it hath been as Thorns in my Eyes and Pricks in my Sides and so for ever I have been and shall be from turning another way And my Lords and Gentlemen you shall be my Confessors that one way or other it hath been my Desire to hinder the growth of Popery and I could not be an honest Man if I should have done otherwise And this I may say further That if I be not a Martyr I am sure I am a Confessor and in some sense I may be called a Martyr as in the Scripture Isaac was Persecuted by Ismael by mocking Words for never King suffered more ill Tongues than I have done and I am sure for no cause yet I have been far from Persecution for I have ever thought that no way increased any Religion more than Persecution according to that Saying Sanguis Martyrum est Semen Ecclesiae Now my Lords and Gentlemen for your Petition I will not onely grant the Substance of what you craved but add somewhat more of my own For the Two Treaties being already anulled as I have declared them to be it necessarily follows of it self that which you desire and therefore it needs no more but that I do declare by Proclamation which I am ready to do That all Jesuits and Priests do depart by a Day but it cannot be as you desire by Our Proclamation to be out of all my Dominions for a Proclamation here extends but to this Kingdom This I will do and more I will Command all my Judges when they go their Circuits to keep the same Courses for putting all the Laws in Execution against Recusants as they were wont to do before these Treaties for the Laws are still in force and were never dispensed with by me God is my judge they were never so intended by me But as I told you in the beginning of the Parliament you must give me leave as a good Horse-man sometimes to use the Reins and not always to use the Spurs So now there needs nothing but my Declaration for the disarming of them that is already done by the Laws and shall be done as you desired And more I will take order for the shameful disorder of the Resorting of my Subjects to all forein Ambassadours of this I will advise with my Council how it may be best reformed It is true that the Houses of Ambassadors are privileged places and though they cannot take them out of their Houses yet the Lord Mayor and Mr. Recorder of London may take some of them as they come from thence and make them Examples Another Point I will add concerning the Education of their Children of which I have had a principal care as the Lord of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester and other Lords of my Council can bear me witness with whom I have advised about this Business For in good faith it is a shame their Children should be bred here as if they were at Rome So I do grant not onely your Desire but more I am sorry I was not the first mover of it to you But had you not done it I should have done it my self Now for the second part of your Petition You have there given me the best advice in the World For it is against the Rule of Wisdom that a King should suffer any of his Subjects to transgress the Laws by the intercession of other Princes and therefore assure your selves that by the Grace of God I will be careful that no such Conditions be foisted in upon any other Treaty whatsoever For it is fit my Subjects should stand or fall to their own Laws If the King had seriously and really considered the Minute of this Petition the very last Clause wherein the Glory of God and the Safety of his Kingdoms so much consisted as the Parliament wisely express and foresee and which the King saith is the best Advice in the World and which he promised so faithfully to observe in the next Treaty of Marriage for his Son it might perhaps have kept the Crown upon the Head of his Posterity But when Princes break with the People in those Promises that concern the Honour of God God will let their people break with them to their Ruin and Dishonour And this Maxim holds in all Powers whether Kingdoms or Common Wealths As they are established by Iustice so the Iustice of Religion which tends most to the Glory of God is principally to be observed The King grants them more than they desire but not so much as they hope for they have many good words thick sown but they produce little good fruit Yet the Parliament followed the Chace close and bolted out divers of the Nobility and Gentry of Eminency Popishly affected that had Earth'd themselves in Places of high Trust and Power in the Kingdom as if they meant to under-mine the Nation Viz. Francis Earl of Rutland the Duke of Buckingham's Wives Father Sir Thomas Compton that was married to the Duke's Mother And the Countess her self who was the Cynosure they all steered by The Earl of Castle-Haven The Lord Herbert after Earl of Worcester The Lord Viscount Colchester after Earl of Rivers The Lord Peter The Lord Morley The Lord Windsor The Lord Eure. The Lord Wotton The Lord Teinham The Lord Scroop who was Lord President of the North and which they omitted the Earl of Northampton Lord President of Wales who married his Children to Papists and permitted them to be bred up in Popery Sir William Courtney Sir Thomas Brudnell Sir Thomas Somerset Sir Gilbert Ireland Sir Francis Stonners Sir Anthony Brown Sir Francis Howard Sir William Powell Sir Francis Lacon Sir Lewis Lewkner Sir William Awberie Sir Iohn Gage Sir Iohn Shelly Sir Henry Carvel Sir Thomas Wiseman Sir Thomas Gerrard Sir Iohn Filpot Sir Thomas Russell Sir Henry Bedingfield Sir William Wrey Sir Iohn Conwey Sir Charles Iones Sir Ralph Connyers Sir Thomas Lamplough Sir Thomas Savage Sir William Moseley Sir Hugh Beston Sir Thomas Riddall Sir Marmaduke Wivel Sir Iohn Townesend Sir William Norris Sir
up to three hundred pounds a piece But now again the poor Courtiers were so indigent that sixty pounds would purchase a Knighthood the King wanting other means to gratifie his Servants Yet he was of so free a Nature and careless of Money when he had it though solicitous to get it that he batled in his own bounty For being one day in the Gallery at White-hall and none with him but Sir Henry Rich who was second Son to the Earl of Warwick afterwards Earl of Holland a Gentleman of excellent Natural Parts but youthfully expensive and Iames Maxwel one of his Bed Chamber some Porters past by them with three thousand pounds going to the Privy Purse Sir Henry Rich whispering Maxwel the King turned upon them and asked Maxwel what says he what says he Maxwel told him he wisht he had so much money Marry shalt thou Harry saith the King and presently commanded the Porters to carry it to his Lodging with this Expression You think now you have a great Purchase but I am more delighted to think how much I have pleasured you in giving this money than you can be in receiving it This Story intervenes to shew the Temper of his Mind About this time also Gold was raised to two shillings in the pound occasioned from the high value set upon it abroad which made the Merchant transport it But the first Inhancers can make their Markets by ingrossing great Sums especially the Payments of those times and all this Kings Reign being for the most part in Gold so that it might be called the Golden Age that it is a wonder now what gulf hath swallowed those great sums if their golden wings be not flown to the Sun-rising But these little projects will bring in but small store of money to maintain the Work many such Materials must go to make up a Royal Building and little Streams will not easily fill a Cistern that hath many Issues A Parliament can furnish all but who dare venture on such Refractory Spirits Yet there was a generation about the Court that to please and humour Greatness undertook a Parliament as men presuming to have Friends in every County and Borough who by their Power among the People would make Election of such Members for Knights and Burgesses as should comply solely to the Kings desires and Somerset is the Head and Chief of these Vndertakers But this was but an Embrion and became an Abortive The English Freedom cannot be lost by a few base and tame spirits that would unmake themselves and their Posterity to ingrandize one Man For the Parliament meeting according to their Summons such Faces appeared there as made the Court droop who instead of Contributing to the Kings wants lay open his wasts especially upon the Scots with whom they desire medietatem linguae a share of favour The Bread by our Saviours rule properly belonging to the Children of the Kingdom And they beseech His Majesty to stop the Current of future access of that Nation to make residence here having enough to eat up their own Crums They enquire into the Causes of the unexpected increase of Popish Recusants since the Gun-Powder Plot the detestation whereof they thought should have utterly extinguished them and they find it to the Admission of Popish Nobility into his Counsels the silencing of many watchful and diligent Ministers the divers Treaties his Majesty hath entertained not only for the Marriage of the deceased Prince Henry but for Prince Charles that now liveth with the Daughters of Popish Princes which dis-heartneth the Protestant and encourageth the Recusant laying open with these many other miscarriages in Government which the King willing to have concealed stopt them in their Course dissolving the Parliament and committing to the Tower and other Princes the beginning of incroachment upon the publick liberties such as were most active for the Common good These fair Blossoms not producing the hoped-for fruit they find out new Projects to manure the People different much in name and nature a Benevolence extorted a Free-gift against their wills was urged upon them and they that did not give in their money must give in their names which carried a kind of fright with it But the most knowing men like so many Pillars to the Kingdoms liberties supported their Neighbours tottering Resolutions with assuring them that these kind of Benevolences were against Law Reason and Religion First against Law being prohibited by divers Acts of Parliament and a Curse pronounced against the infringers of them Secondly against Reason that a particular man should oppose his judgment and discretion to the wisdom and judgment of the King assembled in Parliament who have there denyed any such aid Thirdly against Religion That a King violating his Oath taken at his Coronation for maintaining the Laws Liberties and Customs of the Realm should be assisted by the people in an Act of so much Injustice and Impiety These and many other Arguments instilled into the people by some good Patriots were great impediments to the Benevolence So that they got but little money and lost a great deal of love For no Levies do so much decline and abase the love and spirits of the people as unjust Levies Subsidies get more of their money but Exactions enslave the mind for they either raise them above or depress them beneath their sufferings which are equally mischievous and to be avoided This Summer the King of Denmark revisited his Sister the Queen of England with some forty Lords Gentlemen and others in his Train landing at Yarmouth and passing directly to London took up his Lodging in our Common Inns and was not known but for some Outlandish Nobleman till he came to the Queens Palace in the Strand where she was surprized with the unexpected joy of a Brothers company distanced from her by the interest of his people the great Bar that hinders Princes the common civilities and happiness of their Inferiors But the joy continued not long for after some fourteen days interview they parted again But those days had such a plenitude of all those delights that contend to satisfaction as if a great deal of more time had been involved and contracted in them VERA EFFIGIES FRANCISCAE COMITISSAE SOMERSETIAE VICECOM ROFFEN ETc The lively portraict of the Lady Francis Countesse of Somerset Sir Ralph Winwood who had been Lieger-Ambassador with the States in the Netherlands for his abilities and good service had merited so much from the King that he made him Secretary of State The Queen closes with him the better to discover Somersets miscarriages and he was ready enough to oblige her for Somerset made him but an Vnderling grasping all Publick imployments into his own hand not caring whom he disobliged or what Malice he pulled upon himself for like a Coloss he stood the brunt of all the Tempests of Envy making those that carried the greatest sail to strike and come under him Nor would he suffer any