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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	country_n	great_a	king_n	8,331	5	3.6012	3	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79847	A letter from a true and lawfull member of Parliament, and one faithfully engaged with it, from the beginning of the war to the end. To one of the lords of his highness councell, upon occasion of the last declaration, shewing the reasons of their proceedings for securing the peace of the Commonwealth, published on the 31th of October 1655.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1656 (1656)	Wing C4424; Thomason E884_2; ESTC R207305	35,184	70

to you that after a short time of sitting there the continuall Feaver of the House made my pulse beat higher too and the prejudice I had to some persons in power and authority from whom as I thought I had received some hard measure lessened my esteem and opinion of the Court Then the Lords free concurrence in whatsoever we proposed and the Kings as ready granting whatsoever we desired made me thinke my self in the number of those who were to governe all the World and insensibly I found my self a greater man than I had before imagined I was I chose the conversation of those who were believed most intent and solicitous to free the subject from the vexations and pressures he had been made liable to and I thought them the most competent Judges of the remedies which were to be applyed to those diseases which they had so exactly discovered in a word I believed all they said and out of the innate Reverence I had for Parliaments I concluded it impossible for any thing to flow from thence that could bring damage or inconvenience to King or People wherein how much I have been deceived the world knows and I am not ashamed to acknowledge And this opinion and resignation of my self to that infallible Guide made me neither strictly weigh what they did nor patiently hear those Objections which I could not answer thinking worse of the persons who objected than of the things they objected against When the matter of the Militia was first handled I had no other understanding of it than as I had observed it had been exercised very unequitably by the Lords Lieutenants and their Deputyes and therefore I hearkened willingly to those Lawyers who confidently averr'd it was not in the Crown yet the greatest reason that perswaded me to joyne with those who would presse the King in it was that I thought and was assured that he who had till then granted all we asked would not then begin to deny besides that I saw most of his Councell and Servants who were of both Houses engaged in the same party and importunity When so many Members of both Houses left the Parliament and went to the King I could not deny that very many of them were persons of great Integrity and eminent lovers of their Countrey yet I thought their condition so desperate that a Serjeant at Armes would have reduced them all and was resolved not to imbarke my self in so hopelesse a dependance the Parliament being to common understanding possessed of the whole strength of the Kingdome Nor had I ever the least apprehension of a Warre till we heard that some of our Troops were defeated by Worcester and that the King began to gather an Army about Shrewsbury which yet I thought would never have looked ours in the face but that the King would upon some Treaty have given my Lord of Essex leave to have guarded him to Westminster and that all who had obeyed the Parliament should have had offices preferments and rewards and this perswasion never departed from me till we saw the Kings Army drawing down Edghill towards us the morning before that Battell From that time I wished we had been to begin again and that we had left off to aske when the King was resolved to grant no more I remember three nights after I was quartered neer Warwick at the House of a Minister whom I had known long before and who was then fled being reckoned one of the Prelaticall party and so not taking himself to be secure among our Troops which were not eminent for civility towards that part of the Clergy I understood he was hid amongst his Neighbours and thereupon sent to him to return home assuring him he should be very safe He came very willingly and told me he could not fear the receiving any injury where I commanded and so entertained me with much cheerfulness during the time I stayed there sitting with him one evening I told him I believed the loss of blood on both sides had so much allayed all distempers that there would be no need of drawing more but that the King and the Parliament would easily come to a Treaty and compose all differences and extinguish all jealousies that had been between them He smiled and said he had read a story in Aelian that when in one of the States of Greece Nicippus his sheep brought forth a Lyon it was generally and justly concluded that it portended a Tyranny and change of the State from a peaceable to a bloody Government and it fell out accordingly Truly Sir said he when the two Houses of Parliament produced a Soveraign power to make a Generall raise an Army and to declare war after that milde and innocent Sheepe that legall venerable Councell had once brought forth that Lyon which seeks whom he may devoure I gave over all my hopes of the continuance of that blessed calme and temperate State of Government by which every man eat the fruit of his own vine and I expect nothing but rapine blood and desolation and if you have those hopes you mention you will finde your self disappointed and that they who you think are of the same minde with you have nothing less in their purposes than Peace or to perform one promise they have made to the People but they resolve to change the whole frame of Government and to sacrifice the wealth and tranquillity of their Country to their own Ambition Covetousness and Revenge and when once they discern that you will not pursue their most violent courses they will more endeavour your destruction than of them against whom you are both now so unanimously engaged This discourse which I then considered onely as proceeding from the spirit of a man who I knew approved nothing that we did afterwards made impression upon me and I discerned every day men recede from the grounds they had before seemed to consent to and to be less inclined to overtures of Peace than they had formerly appeared to have been yet upon those specious reasons That our onely security consisted in keeping so much power in our own hands that it might not be in the Kings power to do us hurt That if we receded from those Propositions which we had pressed the King to grant we should shortly be bereaved of those good Laws he had already granted at least it would be necessary in all Treaties to insert and in some degree to insist upon those Propositions how extravagant soever that by departing from them we might pretend to pay a valuable consideration for those Concessions which we must still require from the King for our own indemnity and by these means our Treaties came to nothing the Treators being never left at liberty to recede from those unreasonable Propositions which were therefore made unreasonable as was pretended that they might be receded from I will not deny to you that when upon the Kings successes Commissioners were sent to invite the Scots to our assistance and

their dependance upon and devotion to you there needs no evidence beyond the Book lately written by Mr. White a Romish Priest and dedicated to your Favourite Sir Kenelm Digby entituled The Grounds of Obedience and Government in which he justifies all the Grounds and Maxims in your Declarations and determines positively That you ought to be so far from performing any promise or observing any Oath you have taken if you know that it is for the good of the People that you break it albeit they foreseeing all that you now see did therefore binde you by Oath not to do it That you offend against both your Oath and Fidelity to the People if you maintain those limitations you are sworn to and sure what you do must be supported by such Casuists Lastly we know very well how far you are from confiding in your own Army how jealous you are of many of the Officers and more of the Common Souldiers and therefore that you raise those several little Armies in the several Counties with which you hope to suppress or controul the standing Armie upon any occasion when the sense of their own and their Countries miserable condition shall render it less devoted to you And we likewise know how in distrust of the whole English Nation you are treating to bring over a Body of Swisse to serve you as the Janizaries do the Turk and in order to controul your own Army as well as to reduce the People to an implicit obedience to your Government That most of the Money which was collected amongst us for the poor Protestants of the Valley of Lucern is returned and applyed to the carrying on those Levies and that many are already landed in England and are now about London upon pretence that they are to be sent to plant in Ireland whereas they are kept for the compleating those Regiments which are every day expected to arrive and then you have compleated your work and brought the onely lasting calamity upon the Kingdome which you have hitherto forborn to do and with which odious reproach you charged the Counsels of the former times onely for intending to introduce forreign Forces I cannot end this Discourse without taking notice of your so frequent mention throughout this Declaration and indeed upon all occasions in your ordinary conversation of the continued assistance and presence of God in whatsoever you have gone about of his gratious dispensations and his visible hand manifested in your successes and of his more than usual care and kindness towards you whereas if you would soberly revolve what is passed and dispassionately consider and weigh your present condition it may be you would finde your Case so rare and wonderfull that there have seldome been a People in the World who have had more reason to believe themselves to lye under the signal and terrible displeasure of God Almighty and against whom his vengeance is more manifestly threatned than you at present have You have had all the advantages and all the successes which you could ever propose and hope for and some greater than you could hope for and your perplexities and insecurity remains greater than before you have not an Enemy in the three Kingdomes who stands in opposition of your power or who indeed is Owner of a Sword to resist you and yet you avow and discover such a proportion of fear that new Armies must be raised for your defence you have gotten all the Wealth of the three Kingdomes into your hands and enjoy none your wants and necessities being so great when you had little credit and less interest to do good or harm you had many Friends and few who hated you and now it is in your power to make great whom you please and to destroy all whom you are angry with your Friends leave and forsake you and you are grown so universally odious that you may say to those who adhere to you as Catiline did to his Army Neque locus neque amicus quisquam teget quem arma non texerint All your safety is in your Army and yet you fear that little less than your Enemies How many of those who bore parts with you in your darkest Designs have laid violent hands upon themselves out of the conscience of their own wickedness And is not that Curse in Leviticus fallen upon the rest And upon them that are left alive of you I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword and they shall fall when none pursues Can there be a greater slavery than to be afraid of those whom you have subdued And hath not God delivered you as he did those of Judah and Jerusalem to trouble to astonishment and to hissing as you see with your eyes So that in truth setting aside the peace and tranquillity of minde which must prepare the joyes of the next World for us and considering meerly the delight and pleasure in this into which some degree of reputation the affection of some Friends and the fidelity of those we trust are necessary Ingredients I had rather be the most undone man that this Declaration hath preyed upon than my Lord Protector or any one of his Councel in whose names it is published To conclude As it is manifestly destructive to all the liberty and property of the People and to the Laws of the Kingdome by observation whereof alone those liberties and that property can be preserved so to common understanding it must be the most fatal Instrument against your own interest and security and make all men see how inconsistent theirs is with the Government you have erected You have pulled up Parliaments by the roots which are the onely natural security the Nation can have against Oppression and Tyrannie and which we thought we had exactly provided for by the Triennial Bill and which will at present authorize the People to assemble and make their Elections You have cancelled all Obligations of Trust and taken away all possible confidence from all men that they can ever enjoy any thing that they can call their own during this Government and having so little pleasure left them in life they will preferre the losing it in some Noble Attempt to free their Country and themselves from the bondage and servitude they live under to the dying ignobly in some loathsome Prison when you please to be afraid of them Do not value your selves upon the terrour you infuse into the People by your frequent Sacrifices of Blood and exposing their Friends to them on Scaffolds and on Gallows Remember that it is recorded of Ann de Burg who was burnt in France in the year 1559. upon matter of Religion That the death and constancy of a man so conspicuous did make many curious to know what Religion that was for which he had so couragiously endured punishment and made the numbers increase exceedingly Trust me you have gotten nothing by those Spectacles and men return from them more confirmed in their detestation of you than terrified from any of their purposes towards you And when the despair you have put them into shall make them consider that as the misery calamity servitude and infamy under which the three Kingdomes suffer proceed entirely from you so that they will be determined with you That the general hatred and detestation of you is such that it is very probable that those Noble Patriots whose spirits shall be raised to destroy you shall not onely reap unutterable Honour from it but finde safety in it either from the Confusion that must instantly attend or from the abhorring your Memories in those that shall survive you If they shall perish in or upon their Attempt what a Glorious Fame will they leave behind them what a sweet Odour will their Memories have with the present and succeeding Ages Statues will be erected to them and their Names recorded in those Roles which have preserved the Bruti the Horatii the Fabii and all those who have dyed out of debt to their Country by having paid the utmost that they owed to it their Merits will be remembred as those of the Primitive Martyrs and their Children and Kindred will be alwayes looked upon as the Descendants from the Liberators of their Country and esteemed accordingly their Fate will be like his in the Son of Syrach If he dye he shall leave a greater name than a thousand and if he live he shall increase it And all the Peace Tranquillity Splendor and Glory which the Kingdomes shall hereafter enjoy which will be the greatest that any Nation in Europe hath been possessed of in the awe and dread their Enemies will have of them in the reverence of their Friends and the full veneration of all the World will still be imputed and attributed to those Heroick Spirits the Authors of this first deliverance And besides the preventing that Deluge of Blood with which the Land will be otherwise overwhelmed by this means the Nation will be restored to the Honour it hath lost by freeing it self without any forreign help from that miserable Condition into which we are fallen by our own meer Folly and Madness And they that come after him shall be astonished at his day as they that went before were affrighted Job 18. 20. FINIS Matth. 13. 29. Deut. 21. 50. Joseph lib. 17. c. 3. 2 Sam. 23. 3. Full Ho War ●… 41. Pag. 21. Cooks Pleas of the Crown fol. 23. Salust Pag. 14. Plut. vitâ Timol Liv. li 7. Cooks Pleas of the Crown fol. 9. Liv. lib. 1. Grot. de Jure Bel. Pacis Wisdom 17. 12. Cant. 8. 6. Plutar. vitâ Sol. 1 Kings 20. 24. Lo. Cook jurisd. of Co. fol. 42. Hist. Conc. Tr. fol. 396. Vit. Phil. Pag. 38. Pag. 89. Salust Lev. 26. 36. 2 Chron. 29. 8. Ecclesiastic 39. 11.

I saw a great Army of that Nation ready to enter the Kingdome upon those unworthy Conditions on our part that ought never to have been submitted to I was in that perplexity that I thought of nothing but casting my self at the Kings feet I was ashamed that having so long reproached the King with designs of calling over forreign Forces as if the affections of his People should fail in any thing that was just for him to attempt and having prevailed so far upon the People by those reproaches we our selves should call in a forreign Army to help us and after we had pretended to ask nothing of the King but what the People would not be contented without and therefore because the Kingdome generally did desire and expect it that we our selves should draw in an Army of Strangers of which there could be no need if it were not to impose that upon the Kingdome which it did not desire I called to minde that Plutarch seemed to commend Lysander for having thought it less dishonour and reproach unto the Grecians to be overcome by other Grecians than to go slatter the barbarous people and seek to them that had gold and silver enough but otherwise no goodness or honesty I remembred what a costly Visit they had made to us two years before and did truly believe that what we could suffer from one another could be nothing to the lasting Calamity they would bring upon us who I was confident could never be a means of restoring Peace and Happiness to the Kingdom In a word I thought of nothing more than of renouncing those who had so apparently renounced their Professions and of cordially joyning with the King's Party Whil'st I was thus resolved I heard of the cold reception they had who were already gone to Oxford and that the Court there carried it self as if it could do its business without help and thought themselves losers by passing by any thing that had been done amiss The anger and indignation I contracted hereupon made me change my purpose and to revolve that if others should be of the same minde I had been and desert the Parliament there would be none left to make reasonable Conditions for them who had been engaged in the Quarrel which I perswaded my self would at some time be done And I was sure that though we might have exceeded our Jurisdiction and done many unlawfull things our being together was still lawfull and whil'st it was so we should at last upon good or ill fortune be Parties to such an Agreement as would secure our selves who staid which was more than they could promise themselves who went away Hereupon I was fixed never more to think of quitting the Parliament but to run its fortune and accordingly I proceeded to the end of the War and never left the House notwithstanding the several Factions and Animosities and the Violence and Tumults which I much disliked untill I was with the m●jor part of the House of Commons kept from thence by the Army and used in that scornfull manner as is notorious enough because after the Treaty at the Isle of Wight I desired that an Agreement should be made with the King I have troubled you with this short recollection of my part in this business that you may see how far I have been from favouring Cavaliers by whom I have had the honour to be thought so considerable that I was alwayes excepted from pardon in those Proclamations and Declarations which then issued out Whil'st there was a War carried on by the Parliament I ventured my life and lost my blood in that War and whil'st there was a Parliament I continued in the service of it and since that time I have enjoyed my self in as much peace and tranquillity as the Calamities of the time would suffer me and without further opposing the present power than in my heart not submitting to it or taking it to have any colour of Law or Justice or Religion or Reason to support it And as I do heartily ask God forgiveness for the ill I have been guilty of during the War so I do humbly thank his Divine Majestie for preserving me from the guilt of the ill that hath been done since and I hope the remembrance of the former or apprehension of any thing that may be the consequence of it shall never work upon me to approve the latter And so I come to your Declaration it self the several parts whereof I shall speak to without observing precisely the order they are in but taking the liberty to marshal them according to my own way and method Let me then begin with complaining that you assume to your selves throughout the Declaration the stile of the Best Affected of the Nation of those with whom the Honour and Interest of the English Nation is deposited and indeed of the Nation it self and reckon all who are not pleased with the Government you have so manifestly usurped Enemies to the Nation which you must give us leave who have sweat and bled more than any of you for the interest and liberty of the Nation and are sure a more considerable part of it both in weight and measure to take very ill of you We cannot we must not endure to have it believed that the English Nation is shrunk into my Lord Protector and his Highness Councel who all together had not the interest of one common Village when these Troubles began you may be such a Nation as God threatned his chosen people withall in Deuteronomy A Nation of fierce Countenance which shall not regard the person of the old nor shew favour to the young The Latine Translation renders it Gentem impudentem an insolent sort of people that cared neither for God nor Man The Grammarians give the stile usually to Sects or Professions of Men Natio Philosophorum Natio Poetarum and among the Jews the Sect of the Pharisees was frequently called the Nation of the Pharisees you will finde in Josephus a very lively description of them who he sayes were so much addicted to self opinion and boasted themselves to be the exactest Observers of the Law in all the Country to whom the women were very much addicted as to those who were much beloved of God as in outward appearance they made shew to be These were such as durst oppose themselves against Kings full of fraud arrogancy and rebellion presuming to raise War upon their motions of spirit and to rebel and offend their Princes at their pleasure and whereas all the Nation of the Jews had sworn to be faithfull to Caesar and to the Estate of the King those onely refused to take the Oath so far he And if you please this Nation you may be except you choose rather for you bear great love and affection to the Jews to be of their fourth Sect which the same Author tells you was founded by Judas of Galilee and accorded in all things with the Pharisees but that they were so

in that Court and who dare no more look a Monarch in the face than they dare justify what they have done at the day of Judgment there is not one man in credit with you nor of command in any of your Armies by Sea or Land nay whom you have not eminently affronted disobliged and and oppressed except he hath such a relation of blood as may render him unsuspected And can you think these men friends to your present Government and consequently can they but thinke themselves involved in this Declaration and designed to maintain those additionall forces which are or must be raised to defend you from those of whom you see reason that the people should be afraid Your next Government was entirely by the Armie which as if it had not fought to suppresse all exorbitancy of power but to possess it self of it and was now sufficiently qualified to do all that others had or would have done before laid Taxes and impositions upon the Kingdom repeated over all the ill things which had been complained of before in most intolerable and insupportable degrees and improved the confusion to that height that there was no shadow or formality of Justice left and that dist●action in Gods worship that there were more Religions than Regiments and all practised with equall licence and animosity against each other when on the suddain the Generall of the Army if he can be called a Generall whose Commission was determined by the determination of that Body that granted it the Parliament takes upon him to assemble another number of people every man chosen by himself and that Councell of Officers of the Army who were constituted by himself and making their appearance before him called them a Parliament called himself their servant and besought them to repaire those breaches and ruines of the Commonwealth which their wisedom could only do most of them being men of no parts no experience no quality no interest in the Kingdom serving only to render the venerable name of Parliament ridiculous by their frivolous and impertinent consultations without doing any sober act in order to the healing the wounds of the Commonwealth as their Predecessors had made it odious by taking upon them so unlimited a power to vex and grieve and devour their Brethren And when these had brought themselves into a sufficient reproach and disestimation of the people and yet could not be enough united amongst themselves to serve the Generalls turn part of them went to him confessed themselves too weak to sustain the great burthen he had laid upon their shoulders and desired him to take the power again which he he had so graciously conferred on them and that he would take upon himself the ordering and repairing the Commonwealth which they had not wisedom to do The other part that had a better opinion of their own abilities and believed they might find some proper remedies for the publique grievances were according to the late method turned out of doors by the Souldiers that they might no more continue those unprofitable Consultations And so by these few Bankrupts repaying the small money he had lent them the Generall takes Livery and Seisin of the whole Treasure of the Kingdom and thinks this a sufficient delegation of the power and interest of the Nation into his hands of which he makes use within few dayes after and with a suddain and unexpected solemnitie the Lord Major of London the Judges and the Keepers of the great Seal being summoned to attend without knowing any part of the busines upon the advice and by the consent of half a score of his friends who were like to look that he should receive no hurt He degrades himself from the Office of Generall and unlimited power thereof as he sayes and is contented under the stile of Protector of the three Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland to be restrained within the limits he had prepared for himself laid aside his Excellency to be his Highness and contented himself with all the Crown Lands which were left unsold and a limited power as he called it extending farther than ever King pretended to and this was the rise and progresse of your present Government to which you expect such an obedience as must produce a reall change of all our Principles and interest and if we are but thought to have evill intentions towards this Government we must be at the charge of the Armies raised to secure it That which disposed the mindes of the people to abstaine from a present Protestation against this Government besides the Agony of the late confusions and the astonishment upon the new wonderfull alteration was that it was but temporary and that limited to a very short time A free Parliament was to be called within so many moneths which was entirely to consider and settle the Government of the Kingdom to remove all those obstructions which hinder the Peace and happiness of the Nation and to restore it to that tranquillity and quiet it had been so long deprived of And the Protector was sworn to a due observation of all those Articles which he had himself prescribed for his own rules and bounds and therefore the more hope that he would be contented to be limited by them It cannot be denied that the Kingdom chose many worthy persons of fortune interest and experience as their Deputies to provide for the publique security who entred upon a free disquisition of the state the Kingdom was in according to the very Method prescribed by the Instrument of Government and to enquire by what means and title so vaste and transcendent a power was gotten into the hands of one man so contrary to what had been before determined many men professing that if after so much blood spilt and calamities undergone by the people to free them from Monarchique Government it should be now found most agreeable to the Nature and temper of the Nation to return to the same forme of subjection there could be little doubt it would be much better to restore it to the Royall Person to whom by the line of succession the unquestionable Right was derived and whose being possessed of it would in a moment restore the whole Nation to a full and entire Peace from whose unblemished youth and gratious disposition as much of happiness might be expected as had been enjoyed in any former Kings Raign than by continuing it in the hands of an Usurper who had violated so many Oaths and Protestations already and had ascended to this pitch only by the most bare-faced breach of severall trusts that ever Christian or Gentleman was guilty of to expose the Kingdom to a warre that could have no end but in the ruine and desolation of it These grave necessary and important debates were no sooner entred into than in contempt of all Privileges of Parliament which will not allow matters in debate to be taken notice of the Protector like a King Nam impune quaelibet facere id