use of any such forces as the Parliament should send over against them and consequently to dis-enable them the more in levyes here for their own defence against him and his preparations as it evidently appeared within 3. moneths after by the said seizure of the Horses cloaths and provisions sent by Chester as also by his remanding over the Regiments sent before into Ireland to make use of them as it is visibly known he did against the Parliament But I pray extend your patience and look farther into this darke worke of the Kings take a short viewe of his next Message from Nottingham where he erected his Standard it bears date the 25. of August 1642. Next to this his Message of the 5th of Sept. 1642. with another of the 11th of September following in pursuance of the former peruse them all and you shal evidently see such notable juglings and Matchivilian dissemblings as would amaze any Christian eye to behold them compared with his actions his Pourtraicture and his own letters taken at Naseby I shall present them all in their order verbatim and first that of the 25 of August 1642. viz. We have with unspeakable griefe ef heart long beheld the distraction of this our Kingdome our very soul is full of anguish untill we may finde some remedy to prevent the miseries which are ready to overwhelm this Nation by a Civil War and although all our indeavours tending to the composing of those unhappy differences betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament though pursued by us with all zeale and sincerity have been hitherto without the successe we hoped for yet such is our constant earnest care to preserve the publicke peace that we shall not be discouraged to use any expedient which by the blessing of the God of Mercy may lay a happy foundation of peace and happinesse to all our good subjects To this end observing that many mistakes have arisen by the Messages Petitions and Answers betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament which happily may be prevented by some other way of treaty wherein the matter in difference may be more clearly understood more freely transacted we have thought fit to propound to you that some fit persons may be by you enabled to treat with the like number to be authorized by us in such a manner and freedom of debate as may best tend to that happy conclusion which all good men desire the peace of the Kingdom wherein as we promise in the word of a King all safety and incouragement to such as shall be sent unto us if you shall chuse the place where we are for the Treaty which we wholly leave to you presuming on the like care of the safety of those we shall imploy if you shall name another place So we assure you and all our good Subjects that to the best of our understanding nothing shall therein be wanting on our part which may advance the true Protestant Religion opPose Popery and Superstition secure the Law of the Land upon which is built as well our just Prerogative as the propriety and liberty of the Subject confirme all just power and Privileges of Parliament and render us and our people truly happy by a good understanding betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament Bring with you as firm resolutions to doe your duty and let our People joyn with us in our prayers to Almighty God for his blessing upon this worke If this Proposition shall be rejected by you we have done our duty so amply that God will absolve us from the guilt of that blood which must be spilt and whatsoever opinion other men may have of our power we assure you nothing but our Christian and pious care to prevent the effusion of blood hath begotten this motion our provision of men money and armes being such as may secure us from further violence til it please GOD to open the eyes of our People Not to trouble you with further search I shall present you that Message of the 5th of September 1642. in pursuance of the former together with that of the 11th of the same Moneth tending all to the same purpose though the Observations on them you shall finde handled separatim and left to your more mature consideration We will not repeat what meanes we have used to prevent the dangerous and distracted estate of the Kingdome nor how these means have been interpreted because being desirous to avoid effusion of Blood we aere willing to decline all memory if former bitternesse that might make our offer of a Treaty readly accepted We did never declare nor ever intended to declare both our Houses of Parliament Traytors or set up our Standard against them and much lesse to put them and this Kingdome out of our protection wee utterly professe against it before God and the World and farther to remove all possible scruples which may hinder the Treaty so much desired of us we hereby promise so that a day be appointed by you for the unvoting of your Declarations against all persons as Traytors or otherwayes for assisting of us we shall with all chearfulnesse upon the same day recall our Proclamations and Declarations and take down our Standard in which Treaty we shall be ready to grant any thing that shall be really for the good of our Subjects conjuring you to consider the bleeding condition of Ireland and the dangerous condition of England in as high a degree as by these our offers we have declared our self to do and assuring you that our chief desire in this world is to beget a good understanding and mutuall confidence betwixt us and our two Houses of Parliament Sebtemb 5. 1642. Who have taken most ways used most endeavours and made most reall expressions to prevent the present distractions and dangers let all the world judge as well by former passages as our two last Messages which have been so fruitlesse that though wee have descended to desire and presse it not so much as a Treaty can be obtained unles we would denude our self of all force to defend us from a visible strength marching against us and admit those persons accompted Traytors to us who according to their duty their Oathes of Allegeance and the Law have appeared in defence of us their King and liege Lord whom we are bound in Conscience and Honour to preserve though we disclaimed all our Proclamations and Declarations and erecting of our Standard as against our Parliament all we have left in our power is to expresse the deep sense we have of the publick misery of this Kingdom in which is involved that of our distressed Protestants of Ireland and to apply our self to our necessary defence wherein we wholly rely on the providence of God the Justice of our cause and the Affection of our good people so far we are from putting them out of our protection when you shal desire a Treaty of us wee shall piously remember whose blood is to be spilt
Traytors which necessarily must be intended the Parliament for they Commissioned Essex and raised their defensive Army which he fought with at Edgehill and all along the competition stiles them Rebels such wide and bold contradictions that no man knows where to him which puts me in mind what some of his own domestick servants have often averr'd that they could not depend on any of his promises or beleeve what he said and sure I am and enough there are of no mean ranke and quality of his servants yet living and in beggery can witnesse and have sad cause to remember that his Letters Patents full dearly paid for and under his Broad seal could not protect any of them from resuming into his own hands that he had a mind to either to make use of them to his own advantage or to confer them on others as he was pleased without other satisfaction but with fruitlesse promises that they should be considered Next he goes on and sayes that on the Parliaments revocation of their Declarations as Traytors or otherwayes for assisting of us we will with cheerfullnesse upon the same day recall our Proclamations and take downe our Standart but note then it necessarily followes that it could not be erected but onely against the Parliament unlesse his meaning was to erect it against the Man in the Moon but here you have the kernell of that nut which stuck so fast in the Kings stomack and was it not a very fine and equall proposition to put the innocent and the nocent into the ballance the just with the unjust and either to make War or free so many and hainous Delinquents that resorted unto him together with those false and fugitive Lords and Commons trusted by their Countreys which by the laws of the Land ought not to have departed without leave of the Speaker and that on urgent occasion Bethink your self whether this Proposition suited either with Reason Honour Conscience and the ancient usage and Presidents of Parliaments or with the Kings Justice to become the skreen to Delinquents of so high a strain but to the close of this Message where he conjures the Parliament againe to consider the bleeding condition of Ireland and the dangerous condition of England when as none but himself was guilty of that Phlebotomy and he alone that first set them and kept them a bleeding so long as that to stanch the veyne the State could not devise a better cure than to let out his blood which had let out so much throughout the three Kingdomes as would have dyed the vast Ocean into crimson But briefly to his next Message of the 11th of Sept. 1642. where all the world may see where the Remora lay that staid him from comming to the Parliament untill he had provided for the indempnity of all those persons c. which he sayes were accounted Traytors to us who according to their duty their Oaths of Allegiance and the Law have appeared in defence of us their King and Liege Lord whom we are bound in Conscience and Honor to preserve So that it here appeares plainly that no other obstacles then stood in the way of his returne to the Parliament but the absolute Indempnity of all that had appeared in his defence according to their duty oaths Law as he would have it beleeved his pretended fear of Tumults are not here in question neither any other material exception but the indempnity of his Partizans a goodly Honour and Conscience could he have brought so great a party with Indempnity into London and to the Parliament it seems then he doubted not but to make his party good with or without fighting and what betweene their owne power and his fraud its plain that he thought in time he should be enabled to over-power the Parliament and to carry all other things answerable to his will and hearts desire but by what law could those fugitive Members depart the House and flye to him and by what Law could hee protect them which had falsified their Trust was it their duty to run to him at a call who before against his duty and his Oath ran from the Parliament under subterfuges and pretence of Tumults and upon no other ground but by his absence and non-currence as he was made to beleeve to make the Parliament no more than a cypher and that then they neither could or durst act in a doyt without him but having by this time seen his own errour and that the Parliament would and did transact without him and that in want of his concurrence the people concurr'd with them in the defence of the publick liberty he then insists on no other scruple than Indempnity for all his party and here we come to a pure peece of Non-sense where he sayes No other reason induced us to leave our City of London but that with Honour and Safety wee could not stay there nor to raise any force but for the necessary defence of our-person and the Law against levies in opposition to both As to his leaving of the City and the Parliament that pretence is clearly evinc't by his own former overture of comming to them on condition of the Parliaments withdrawing their Proclamations against the Delinquents and fugitive Members but as to his raising of force for the necessary defence of his person and the Law both the reason if there be any and coherence are at so wide and wild a distance as that I beleeve the quaintest of his Secretaryes or him that writ it on a review of the Incongruity would be ashamed to own his own work and observe it for a knowne truth to all the Kingdome did not he first raise a party of Cavaliers to assault the House to beat and kill the poor petitioning people before ever the Parliament had so much as a thought of raising one man when himself was provided with 300 desperat Ruffians fit and ready to attempt any bold Assassination and what one man before himself began had offended him that he of necessity must raise a force to defend his person and the Law was it Law when as at London he found himselfe deceived to raise a strength sufficient to quash the Parliament and against the Legislative power it self but he must run into the North and round about half of his Kingdom to do it and missing his ayms to come at last and so often with flam's and overtures for a Treaty which he never really meant or intended otherwise than in subtilty his wonted fetches to decoy the Parliament and people into a belief of his deepe sense of the bleeding condition of the Kingdoms of which no Prince Christian could be more carelesse as it evidently appears by all his actions examined in the right sense of his own meaning as anon shall be manifestly demonstrated out of his own refusall of the Parliaments petitions As to the Levyes made by the Parliament in opposition to him and the Lawes he might have remembred that none
shews out unto us on how small or no cause at all he would be quarrelsome with his Great Councels and what he would be to all other Parliaments And the more to shew the regret he took at this motion he commands Glanvile a Lawyer a Gentleman of choice education and elocution then a Member of that House to attend the Fleet at Plymouth as he then said to let him understand what he so much desired to know as to the design and upon this miffe abruptly breaks up the Assembly without their assistance which on all honourable and fitting terms was not denyed him The Crown at this time was exceedingly indigent and indeed so beggarly and indebted that the Royall Revenues suffised not to defray the Court expences yet so high and haughty was the Kings heart that rather than to be beholding to the Parliament he was resolved to run any hazard that might befall him and in the midst of this extreme necessity sends Sir Sackvil Crow with the Crown jewels a Gentleman of high esteem with the Duke of Buckingham to pawn them in the Low-Countreys Wise men might then well beleeve that the King could not possibly be so wanting to himself or so poor in treasure as to be put on so dishonourable a streight when as with a good word or two in compliance with the Parliament he might have had before what in reason he would have desired and that at that instant the major part of the Queens Dowry was received but the truth was it was as soon spent as taken in the gayety of the English Lords attendants then on the new Queen at Paris where especially the Duke amongst others out vyed all the French Lords in the sumptuousnesse of his expences and bravery of his apparrell so that how rich soever the Queen and her attendants were then in their Wardrobes sure it is they came home poor enough in purse to the English Court. The Queens French attendants and dependants of both sexes being numerous were doubtlesse far too many to be maintained with any ordinary expence She was then not only in comparison a meer child but childish in her carriage and A la Francoise petulant in her comportment the King was then no more but her Tutor she his Pupil what after they both were in relation to each other and how those offices were inverted time and a little patience will shew but most certain it is that Madam Nurse like an other Philippina the Cajetan to Joan Queen of Naples was both her Oracle and Governess her only attendants or better may it be said her many nasty French appurtenances were more in number than ever were known to follow such an Emperours Governesse for so she then was to the Queen and such vermin they were as that the English Ladies but in respect to the Queen held them to be little better then as Scullions for the Kitchin yet were these the Locusts which then and a long time after devoured all in the English Court which was at that time with much adoe prodigally maintained at Salisbury whilst the King and the Lords of his Councell were all to seek how to defray his own expences and the wantonness of a Court promiscuously pestered both with domestick forrein idle and useless numbers of both sexes I was then in that Progresse and usually in the Court and a sad witnesse into what streights the King was reduced and were it not within the remembrance of many yet alive the relation might seem strange what in so new and greene a Reigne was both attempted and with boldnesse put in execution The prodigality of the Court then so much out-went the Royal Revenues that the Kings Officers and Purveyors had not wherewithall to defray the expence of the King and Queens Tables The King to begin the first President of his arbitrary Governmen sends for the Farmers of the Customes and gaines what possibly he could from them which by reason of the sicknesse and damp of Trade at London would then have put backe their contract upon him however money he had and would have it of them but that served not the turn some other course must be taken for present supply of the Kings wants Sir James Ley then newly made Earl of Marlborow was then Lord Treasurer VVeston and Cottington all new men and of very small beginings were the men shortly after under the Duke which principally then and after managed the Kings Treasury and were those which he had chosen and picked out as fit Ministers to be employed in his after arbitrary designes yet I am confident none of them all durst advise him for any thing which they found not suitable to his inclination The Kings next project then was how he might raise present moneys for from London he could not expect farther supplyes the Merchants and the a blest Citizens being fled the City by reason of the rage of the Pestilence whereupon he resolved to take it where he could find it the City of Salisbury a place of small circuit and of less trade was first prest with a loan of 1000 l. the City of Bristol as I remember with 3000 l. which was by some Aldermen of that City sent to the Court in excuse of their then present disabilityes denied but that served not their turns for they were presently laid by the heels untill the said sum was sent unto him this President being a caveat sufficient to all other of the Western Cities and Towns to send in what sums were skonced on them neither would this serve the Kings indigency but he borrowed of all the principall Gentlemen of the West which were known or conceived to be monyed men it is most evident that even then and at his first accesse to the Crowne he stood not on terms of love or hatred of his people for what he intended it appeared plainly he would do and what he acted he held it sufficiently legall as a piece of his birth-right and of right belonging to him as a King without looking into the nature of the English Soveraignty his will was the law he intended to rule by as to Parliaments his meaning as it appears was the same with Lewes the eleventh of France and in imitation of him to take them down together with their power as he had opportunity notwithstanding some few he called more for the supply of his present necessity than the good he intended to the publick and in the future as time should enable him to be his own carver of his Subjects estates and fortunes as that shortly after followed We have thus laid down in sincerity the beginnings of this unhappy Reign Now this pestilentiall Summer being well spent upon the approach of the Winter and decrease of the Sicknesse the King and the young Queen with all her French train drawes nearer to the City of London and being still in his wonted predicament of want in supply of the Court expences be pursues the game he was resolved to
entrance of his reigne answerable to his Fathers instructions began his arbitrary worke and in pursuance thereof had laid sundry destructive and darke plots how to invassalate the three Nations and by degrees to reduce them all under one Intire arbitrary and absolute soveraignty and when they took not the effect he desired being discovered and opposed by this Parliament then to set up his Standard and array the poore people against themselves which never any King of England durst attempt otherwise than by publick consent and against a forraigne enemy and at last to wage open Narre against his owne subjects and the representative of the Nation Plundering Fyring and desolating the Kingdom to the utmost of his power had you avouched thus much you had hit on the right and shewed your selfe both a friend to truth and your Country but it seems you still stand close to your old destructive principles as at first you sided with the King living so dead you persist to make good his cause whether right or wrong it mattered not much with most of your party the truth is how good or bad soever his cause was it was the bare name of a King and hopes of preferment which drew your Iron into the field and t is the very same at present which invites all of you to flatter and sooth up your selves with the empty name of Loyalty to bring in the new Crown'd King of Scots on the old score without looking to the preservation of the Liberty of your Country and proprieties of your own posterity and the sad consequence thereof as if the publick interest ought to be given up for the fulfilling of your desires and of one mans wilfull pleasure a strange dotage that hath possest you and more strange it is that you should now fall a fresh on a subject that loathes any man of ingenuity to think on it much more to treat on a theam so stale were it but in reference to the memory of him who is at rest But since I find that a kind of confidence possesses your intellectuals that all your allegations are unanswerable and that your provocations amounts to a challenge the fault must be yours not mine If in vindication of truth I lay open the grossnesse of all your errors in the manifestation of his which with such eagernesse and confidence you think your self able to defend being forced through your importunity and the nature of the taske you put upon me to run over the whole progres and managery of all the late Kings designs visible and long since very well knowne to all men of common understanding though I confesse I do not much marvell that your selfe amongst the rest of the facill beliefe have been deceived by the Kings woonted and plausible protestations especially as he handled the matter in the cunning and umbragious carrying on of all his close and hidden designs for I very well know many knowing Gentlemen which have had a long conflict with themselves what judgment to make on the first difference arising between the King and Parliament his Majesty so often protesting how much he intended the welfare of all his subjects how unwilling to embrew the Kingdom with blood how willing to embrace and conserve the peace of the Land how resolved to maintaine the true Protestant Religion how carefull and studious to uphold the Lawes and Liberties of the People how ready to preserve inviolable the privileges of Parliaments and how forward to supply his distressed Protestant Subjects in Ireland all which as a Copy of his counterfeit Countenance he so often protested and confirmed with Imprecations that truely the spirits of many wise men were amazed and a long time stood staggering what to be lieve in the case and doubtfull whether the Kings cause or the Parliaments was most just which party gave the first offence which began the Warre and of this number I confesse my self to be one which stood sometimes diffident in a controversy so variously attested but having made a diligent search into all the passages and transactions between both parties both from before the Sword was drawn and after to the year 1645 when the Kings Cabinet Letters were taken at Naseby and other manifests elsewhere I then began to bethink my self that which before I only admitted in a kind of Ambitious beliefe that the Parliament had then to deal with a King howsoever heretofore valued as a Prince of no deep reach who was not to seek without the help and influence of a malicious Councell to play his owne part I shall not say better but more dextrous and cunningly for his owne ends and to the reducing of the Kingdomes under his absolute power than any of those could direct him whom he most trusted with the mannagery of his designs and secrets truely Sir on that discovery on the publishing of his Letters let me tell you there were many thousands which fell off and from the opinion they held of his integrity and the Iustice of his Cause it being in the next degree to a miracle that after so full a disclosure of the Kings juglings and dissemblings there should any remaine to take his part and the wonder is the more remarkeable that since his death any man should believe him to be a Martyr but whom God hardens they shall be hardened let the Charmer Charme never so wisely some will be deafe and diffident of visible truthes never so clearly manifested of which number that you should perceveere to make one as by your sundry invectives it appears surely it hath not a little troubled me to see the excrescencies of your inveterate malignancy to break out even to obstinacy and so long to have blinded your judgment from discerning of truth from falshood and to have bard you from the right use of distinguishing between reason well weighed and fraud umbrated and attested with the usuall artifices of the royall protestations a faculty by your favour too too common with the King and those quaint pen-men which attended him with plausible Declarations frequently sent abroad ad faciendum populum to catch fools and as the Kings usuall phrase was to undeceive the people prepossest with the reality of the Parliaments Remonstrances when in truth the Kings ends were no other than to decoy the poor credulous Annimalls into an opinion of his good meaning towards them when he intended them most harme as we find it evident in the silly devises and quaint impresses of his money coyned at Oxford pretending that he took up arms in defence of the Protestant Religion the Laws and Liberties of the People and the Priviledges of Parliament when the direct contrary appeared by all his Actions and when as it was manifest that before he began to quarrell with the Scots he tacitely intended and even then designed to suppress Parliaments or so to qualify them that they should be onely usefull to his own ends not to the people and likewise to invade the Liberties of
byassed as it became a Christian King But that you may further understand why the King so peremptorily stood to the upholding of Bishops and to keep the Militia in his own sole power for that 's the meaning of his not quitting the Sword which all the world knows to be no otherwise by the intent of the Lawes of the Land Reason and the Law of Nature an inseparable flower of the Crown than Fiduciary alwaies in reference to a trust given our Kings by Parliament out of confidence that it shall be used to no other intent or end than the defence of the Kingdom and not to be perverted against it as all the ancient and modern Statutes import both in their preambles and texts Cast your eyes on his own Directions to the Vxbridge Commissioners number 21. where you may evidently see that it was not so much the scruple of his Conscience and Coronation Oath as in relation to his own particular designes and interests viz. That as it is the Kings duty to protect the Church so it is the Churches to assist the King in the maintenance of his Authority wherefore my Predecessors have been alwaies carefull and especially since the Reformation to keep the dependency of the Clergy intirely on the Crown without which it will scarsely fit fast on his bead therefore you must do nothing to change this necessary dependance Observation Here you have the true reason wherfore the King so much insisted on the keeping up of Episcopacy and how likewise the cunning Gypsies the Bishops had instill'd it into his apprehension what sure cards they were to keep the Crown fast on his head as if the Crown and Myter had been such inseparables as that the one could not subsist without the other observe withall what a queint Aphorism they first coynd and broched it to King Iames viz. no Bishop no King and judge you whether no Porter no King had not been the better maxime when as it is perspicuous that most of our ancient Kings had no such Enemies as the Bishops witnesse Tho. Becket to Henry the second Lanfranke to Henry the first Roger of Salisbury to King Stephen Orleton to Edward the second with divers others which almost in every Reign opposed their Kings and addrest themselves to the Pope for their Palls and Investitures indeavouring in what possibly they could to free themselves from any dependancy on the Crown untill Henry the eighths time who first of all our Kings freed himself of that servitude which had beene so fatall to most of his Predecessors But look a little further and you shall finde in the Kings 19th Letter to the Queen on the same subject Febr. 25. 1645. from Oxford viz. Thou needs not doubt of the issue of this Treaty for my Commissioners are so well chosen though I say it that they will neither be thretned nor disputed from the grounds I have given them which upon my word is according to the little Note thou so well remembers and to this not only their obedience but judgements concur againe in the same Letter and be confident that in making peace I shall ever shew my constancy in adhering to Bishops and all our friends and shall not forget to put a short period to this perpetuall Parliament but as thou lovest me let none perswade thee to slacken thine assistance for him who is eternally thine Observation Here we have a true Character of this unfortunate Kings naturall obduracy and the aversenesse of his Genius to alter any of his resolutions which once fixt he would effect on any hazzard whatsoever the Earle of Strafferd who best of all others of his arbitrary Ministers had most studied his inclinations needed not to have cherished this humour of the Kings when as in the prosecution of the wars against the Scots 1639. he counsels the King in haec verba Lose all I had or carry all again you may here see how he had aforehand bound up his Commissioners with such instructions from whence they were not to stir or yeeld in a jot as likewise how mindfull he was of the little Note and punctually to observe it a very fine note of remembrances I beleeve had we the honour to have seen it and were we not all of us of the English Nation a happy people to see our King governed by the directions and documents of a woman a strong Papist and of the house of Medicis by the Mother a most Emperious and dangerous generation of women and fatal to all places wheresoever they came a wife its true she was but such a one as ruled and over-ruled that stiffenesse of his constellation and effected more with him than either himself could doe or the most inward of his Councell of State durst attempt and on one caveat of hers would rather adventure the loss of his Crown than not to shew his constancy in the upolding of a Myter you may remember how much pains he was at with the Divines at Newcastle and the Isle of Wight and what tenents he held in his dispute with them concerning Episcopacy and that Bishops were of a Divine and Apostolik Institution which is true in some sense as those were which were instituted by the Apostles but that our late Bishops as they stood here from before and after King Edwards Reformation that they should be taken in with those of St. Pauls making in the generall notion or latitude of Bishops without any distinction as if those Bishops of the Papisticall Church were of the selfe-same nature and of like ordination as those of the Primitive times seemes to me a paradox 'T is true that at the time of the Reformation the dispute grew high at the black-Fryers amongst the Commissioners themselves whether Episcopacy should remain as it then stood or to reduce it to the originall patterne of the primitive Church as Bishop Latimer Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr would have had it but Bishop Ridly and the rest of the Commissioners most of them Bishops as Sir Iohn Heywood in his first Copy of his History of Edward the sixt layes it down would by no means assent unto it the other three maintaining that Bishops as then they stood were no other than chips of the papisticall block and of no affinity with St. Pauls Titmothy's or Titus Bishops neither could they be of any conformity with the ancient and primitive institution but the meer excrescencies sprouting out of the exuberancy of the Papacy long after the defection and adulteration of the primitive Church which defection from the ancient purity began immediately after Gregory the Great and I am very confident that there are none of our late Bishops so impudent as to maintaine that either the Britain or Saxon Kings whatsoever is fabled of King Lucius ever erected any Episcopall Sees or admitted of any Bishops that came hither before Austin the Monk and such others after him as were merely spriggs of the papacy and that long after the adulteration
of the most essentiall part thereof which by far more obligeth the Kings of England to observe than the preamble to that Oath penn'd of old by the Prelats Church-men for their own onely ends and interests a very inconsiderable party in respect of the quality of the Nobility and Gentry and that vast number of the Laity of which it seems the King reckoned of after the Popes computation to be extra Caulam either out of the Church or at best but the fag end thereof and accompts little better of them than as so many cyphers or his slaves at will at pleasure cleane forgetting or slighting the grand more essentiall part of his Coronation Oath which is confidently averr'd the late Arch Prelate purposely emasculated and never gave it him at his Coronation but left him at liberty which all men knows is that which obligeth the King to rule not onely by the Lawes in being but per istas bonas leges quas vulgas eligerit to govern by such good Laws as the Parliament shall chuse and the reason of this is most most perspicuous for the Lawes of England are not of that stamp as those of the Medes and Persians unalterable but changeable according to the vicissitudes of times and change of mens manners and at the Election of the people in their Representative the Kings assent being formall and onely a necessary appendant and by the intent of the Law his principall power consists in the executive part the Parliaments in the elective for it is without all question that never any of our Kings either abrogated or made any Law obligatory to the people by his onely lawfull power but by the Parliaments consent and election the nature of the Kings Office being more cumulative then privative to give rather than to take any thing from their subjects but here you may see what a latitude of power the King assumes to himself where he promiseth to the Queen to take away all the penal laws against Papists as soon as he shall be enabled to doe it without a word of by your leave Parliament so that you may manifestly see what he intended and that no other sence than his owne is here pind upon him you may further observe out of this Letter his windings doublings and fouldings and how dexterously cunning he was growne at playing fast and loose with RELIGION or with any thing else that might promote his mischievous designs leaving no way unattempted though to prophaning of Religion that he conceived might conduce to the visible good of his affairs as that was his usuall expression and what was that visible good think you other than to overpower the Parliament and then to rule as he listed But to shew unto you what a gamester he was at Hocus-pocus I pray look upon the Postcript of his Letter to the Marquesse of Ormond February 16. 1648. from Oxford viz. In case upon particular mens fancies the Irish peace should not be procured upon powers I have already given you I have thought good to give you farther order which I hope will prove needlesse to seek to renue the treaty for a peace for a yeare for which you shall prowise the Irish if you can have it no better cheap to joyn with them against the Scots and Inchiquine but I hope by that time my condition may be such as the Irish may be glad to accept les or I be able to grant more Observation Hence you may make your owne judgement what a Proteus the King was grown you may take this also into your observation as suitable to the rest that in all his Declarations Letters and Messages to the Parliament and after he had lost all and could stand up no longer and was a prisoner they were then directed to his two Houses at Westminster but during his power and so long as he had any hopes left him to conquer them he misses not throughout all his expresses to call them Rebels and in that capacity tacitely treats with them at Vxbridge which the Scots at Rippon utterly refused to treat with him unlesse he would withdraw and disown his proclamations in stiling them Traytors and although he calls them a Parliament yet was it with a mental reservation not so to acknowledge them as you may see in his 17 letter to the Queen where it seems she had schoold him to the purpose for acknowledging them to be a Parliament for which he makes a very humble and ample apology and sayes If there had been but two besides my self of my opinion I had not done it and the argument that prevailed with me was that the calling did no wayes acknowledge them to be a Parliament upon which condition and construction I did it and no otherwise and accordingly it is registred in the Councel books and with the Councells unanimous approbation but thou wilt find that it was my misfortune not my neglect that thou hast been no sooner advertised of it Observation I need not comment on these fine pieces of the Kings your own judgment may informe you what a quaint Iesuiticall jugler he was grown by the conversation he had with the Mother and the Daughter both of them being excellent proficients in the doctrins of Matchivill and surely under the Rose be it spoken himself no very bad Scholler in that kind of learning yet here you may see what pains he was put unto how to make a handsome excuse to save himself from a chiding but I forbeare to make further mention of his perfidious courses more than to put you in minde that so long as his vain imaginations prompted to over-power the Parliament and to reduce all to his own absolute pleasure it s most certain that he refused ali overtures for agreement with the Parliament other than such as before I have intimated he verily believed to make advantage of and this appears in his 9th Letter to the Queen March thirteenth from Oxford viz. Dear Heart What I told thee the last week concerning a good parting with our Lords and Commons here was on Monday last handsomly performed and if I now do any thing unhandsome or disadvantagious to my self or Friends in order to a Treaty it will be merely my owne fault for I confesse when I wrote last I was in feare to have been prest to make some mean overtures to renew the Treaty knowing that there were great labourings to that purpose but I now promise thee if it be renewed which I believe wil not without some eminent good successe on my side it shall be to my honour and advantage I being now as well freed from the place of base and mutinous motions that is to say of our mungrel Parliament here as of the chief causers for whom I may justly expect to be chidden by thee for having suffered thee to be vexed by them Observations We have here a plain proof of the former assertion that during the Kings power he would entertain no Treaties but
man as instantly you may see fearfully protested at the receiving the Sacrament at Christ-Church in Oxford 1643. at the hands of the Bishop of Armagh where immediately before his communicating he beckoning to the Bishop for a short forbearance used these following expressions viz. My Lord I espie here many resolved Protestants who may declare to the world the resolution I do now make I have to the uttermost of my power prepared my Soule to become a worthy receiver and may I so receive comfort by the blessed Sacrament as I do intend the establishment of the true reformed Religion as it stood in its beauty in the happy dayes of Queen Elizabeth without any connivance at Popery I blesse God that in the midst of these publique distractions I have still liberty to communicate and may this Sacrament be my damnation if my heart joyne not with my lips in this Protestation Observation Having seriously considered this strange Protestation of the Kings on the taking of the Sacrament with the imprecation of his damnation if his heart joyned not with his lips as I compared it with his letter after to Ormond together with his many other Protestations I professe in the faith of a Christian I stood amazed what to think of him and his Religion considered againe as it was taken before a publick audience and yet the very next yeare after he makes no scruple or conscience to promise to Ormond the repeal of all laws against Irish Papists and likewise in his Letter to the Queen of the 9th of March 1645. he gives way to her to promise in his name the taking away of all penall Laws against the English Papists so that they shall inable him to doe it where it seemes he makes no manner of account of a Parliament without which as already is said never any King of England either made or repealed any one Law surely t is heer very plaine that he understood not the extent of his own power neither the nature of the English Soveraignty or that he was disposed not to know it but to rule without Parliaments provided that by the assistance of Papists he might be impowred to do it and then that his will should be a Law to the people just Tyrant like stat pro ratione voluntas but take the rest of his Letter to Ormond into your more mature consideration and then happily it will astonish you where he hastens him to clap up the Peace with the Rebels which so soon as it shall be accomplished he vowes haec verba in his Letter to him Number 23 January 7. 1644. All the earth shall not make me breake it but not doubting of a peace I must againe remember you to presse the Irish for their speedy assistance to me here and their friends in Scotland my intention being to draw from thence into Wales the peace once concluded as many as I can of my armed Protestant subjects and I desire the Irish would send as great a body as they can to land about CVMBERLAND Observation Here againe we have a sufficient proof of this most unfortunate Princes inflexibility his resolutions once fixt there were no hopes of their alteration they are his owne words all the earth shal not make me break it though such resolutions breake him in pieces and sure we are many thousands of his poor innocent Subjects through this only fault of his obstinacy T is an infallible truth that the wilfull man never wants woe but when one mans perverse will shall be the cause of the destruction of multitudes that 's a fearfull judgement and a remedilesse calamity We have allso in this Letter an evident testimony what an inveterat hatred he bare towards the English Nation and those Scots which took their parts which he hated beyond belief and all others which never so little fell a thwart his inclinations where I shall crave your favour to tell all of you that sided with him haply more for your own ends than out of conscience for it is most certaine that he made no other accompt of you but to satisfie his own lust in your destruction whatsoever he pretended and to prove this I will tell you a true story and it is this On the death of the late Earle of Northampton whose Commands in one of his Forrests he presently gave away of which Endimion Porter understanding prest him that the young Earle his sonne whose father was then newly slaine in his service was fit to have that conferred on him than on any other on which check of Porters he replyed and hath the Earle done more than became him to dye for his King This is no fable but a knowne truth whereby you may guesse how he esteemed of you all as if his Subjects were a sort of Sheep ordained to the slaughter for the obtaining of his lustful pleasure and not him as the Shephard ordained to preserve them as that flock committed to his care and charge from God himselfe you may instantly find this very story verified and set out unto the life in his former Letter in which with what earnestnesse he presses ORMOND to hasten over the Irish to his assistance yea to bring over as many of his armed Protestants to land in Wales as might inable him to over-power both nations to his absolute domination and revenge A most brutish resolution and of purpose to reset all his Kingdoms on a light fier in setting of Protestants against Protestants and Papists against both you may further observe how his displeasure grew to be so implacable against the Scots his native Subjects and to lay his designe to destroy them together with his English Subjects and the reason of this you may perfectly see in his Letter to Ormond Number 25. Feb. 25. 1647. viz. I do therefore command you to conclude a Peace with the Irish whatsoever it cost so that my Protestant Subjects there may be secured and my regall Authority preserved but for all this you are to make the best bargaine you can and not discover your enlargement of power till you needs must and although I leave the Managing of this great and necessary work intirely to you yet I cannot but tell you that if the suspension of Poynings act for such bils as shal be agreed upon there and the present taking away of the penall Lawes against Papists by a Law will do it I shall not think it a hard bargaine so that freely and vigorously they ingage themselves in my assistance against my Rebells of England and Scotland for which no condition can be to hard not being against Conscience and Honour Observation You may first observe in this Letter the large extent of the Kings Conscience and Honour in the next place his seeming care for the preservation of his Protestant Subjects in Ireland with a purpose rather to make use of them against their Brethren of England than to leave them in Ireland for their own defence where their service was much
Kings raised more treasure by undue exactions and spilt more innocent blood than all of the Norman Kings before him If the premisses are evident truths as they cannot be denyed why then should they be concealed and wrapt up from the sight of the world being so pertinent to be left as Looking glasses for their Successours to behold the deformed faces of their Ancestors so fit to be made known to the deluded number of the people baffled and befool'd with flam's and Fig-leaves what injury then or injustice hath the Parliament done to the Nation in rescuing their Liberties out of the hand of a King which nothing would content but their Invassalage what have they done more in cutting off him with his Posterity to whom he had entayled his designes than necessity hath inforc'd them to do in preservation of the Nation from that inevitable inthralldome which eminently was like and would have befallen the universall people had they not taken away the Effects by the Cause and by that Law of Necessity to which all others are subservient And have they done more than the Romans of old have left in president in the case of Tarquinius and the expulsion of his Posterity for lesse Tyranny and to change the Kingly Government into a Republick when as this most willfull Prince stood so constantly fix'd to his depraved Principles that no perswasions of a Court of Parliament no reason but his will could prevaile or content him but to be the absolute Master of such an immensity of power as that at his own time and pleasure might enable him not only to destroy himself but to overpower the whole Kingdom which to his uttermost he endeavoured and to wade all over in blood to the accomplishment as 't is most manifest by all his actions and the sequell of his owne story And have not the SCOTS on the same Reasons of State in divers presidents acted the like on their Kings when they found them perverse and intractable to any reason as t is manifest in the fatall examples of Dardanus their 20. King from Fergus in Romacus their 36 King and on Alpinus their 68 King all three of them beheaded for their Cruelties and Tyrannies besides twenty more of their Kings either put to death or deposed for their exorbitant Governments and hath the Parliament in this necessitated change of the late Kingly domination into a Common-wealth done more than the Hollanders were compell'd to attempt and happily accomplisht in the very like case when as on their many though fruitlesse Petitions to Philip the second of the invading of their ancient Immunities and slaughtering of 100000 of the Natives by Don Alvares de Toledo and others of his Vice-Royes and themselves utterly deprived of all hopes of redresse of their grievances but only to make head against his Tyranny This question I take the liberty to move to the most rigid Royalist by what right equity or Law of God or man is any Nation in the World bound up to such a blind and unnaturall obedience as to be deprived of self-defence and to sit still without seeking their own preservations whilst an irregular King shall either cut their throats inslave or denude them of their Freedomes when as both Scripture and the Law of Nature and Nations allows it them and that Royalists themselves and the most learned Jurists maintain and concur in one joynt opinion that Subjects in such cases both by Gods Law and that of Nature may defend themselves contra immanem saevitiem against barbarous hostility as Barclay confesseth Hugo Grotius avoucheth it for Law si Rex hostili animo in totius populi exitium feratur amittit Regnum If a King in a hostile way shall attempt to destroy his people he loseth his Kingdome and this stands with infallible reason but leaving this Argument as that which already is in the way of decifion by the sword which when we have all said what can be alleged is the best title of all Kings and Common-wealths and the same on which all or most of the Kings in the world have founded their powers and Soveraignties What a strange passion then and madnesse possesses his surviving party which during the life time and height of their masters power could not with all their united forces their many plots and continued practices prevaile against the Parliament or enable him to attaine to any peece of his ends whose boundlesse ambition lead him as we may safely beleeve to fight as well against Heaven as his own Subjects and saw it not or would not but pursued his designs so long as any power or hopes prompted him to beleeve that happily in the end he might be the Conquerour but but missing of all his aims and himself in another world that there should still remain so many of his defeated partizans which out of an old and inbred malice have found out a way as they vainly conceive how to be revenged on their Conquerors is the wonder of the times by presenting his Book with his picture praying in the Frontispiece purposely to catch and amuse the people magnifying all his misdeeds for pious actions canonizing him for a Saint and idolizing his memory for an innocent Martyr an imposture without other parallell than that of Mahomet considerations which for the generall satisfaction and for the better discovery of the truth of all affairs between the King and Parliament have principally induced me to take in brief the true dimensions of this Sainted King and innocent Martyr and to pull off that false vizzard wherewith his juggling partie hath deckt his Effigies and presented him to the publick view for the most pious Prince of this age that so the people may behold him in his native complexon true it is some other important reasons have moved me to undertake this task as having seen the many poor easie and beleeving people of this Nation too long mislead and cosened out of their understanding by his usuall protestations which God willing shall be made evidently cleer by the Kings own hand writing and by the self same artifices wherewith he had so often deluded and prevailed on the belief of too many of his own party pretending to knowledge above the ordinary rank of the vulgar other reasons have moved me hereunto as for satisfaction of some obstinate Royalists to whom I have wisht well and with whom I have had severall disputes on such particular subjects as may be seene in the subsequent reply ranckt betweene the breviary of the Kings reign and the observations on severall of his own Letters and Expresses and lastly to confute a new sprung up scandall most ungratefully and maliciously raised against the Parliament viz. That the present change of the Government both Civill and Ecclesiasticall the cutting off the King and his Posterity were Plots and Contrivances of a longer date and standing than this Parliament though pursued and accomplished by a party yet sitting at Westminster this
with what expence of blood and treasure did this King labor to inslave the English Nation and to reduce the poor people as naturalized vassalls under the bondage of his lawlesse will and lust Can we make any other Comment on this subject but that which wise men have long since observed that these two Princes never loved the English Nation but in an odium altissimum had aforehand designed to oppresse them and utte rly to extinguish the memory of their ancient Freedoms and can we imagine they intended otherwise by the whole course of their Government When it appears what favours what large concessions and with what complyance and commiseration the late King took care of the Irish Rebells without the least retrospect how much English bloud had been most barbarously spilt by them if he were not conscious that no man was more guilty thereof than himself surely it may well amuse the world why he should be so pitifull and solicitous to have them spared and to brand the Parliament with cruelty for pursuing so just a revenge If we look Northward and examine what Favours Privileges and Countyes were without asking offered to be conferr'd on the Scots 1641. as he went unto them on the onely conditions that they would engage with him against the English Parliament On these considerations can it sink into any rationall mans conception but that he was an inexorable enemy to the Nation kinde to his own if they would have served his turn and an indeered Friend to those bloudy Irish and that on all opportunities his intent was to ruine and invassalate the English Nation though he and his perished as they did in the attempt But to return to our relation The King was now in the 15 yeare of his Reign and notwithstanding the many wayes by which he had raised no small treasure yet was he still indigent and bare in money the Court and the French spent it before it came in and as to any supply by Parliament it suited neither to the Kings good liking or his grand designe the discontinuance of Parliaments conduced more to the advance of what he intended to raise by power than he could expect by the ayde of Parliament since he had but even then closed up all ruptures with France and Spuin and no War in being or in expectation and consequently no ground left him that might presse or induce a Court of Parliament to be over-liberall with the purses of their Electors yet in this exigent and streight he suddenly resolves to call a Parliament where amongst many passages and debates Finch the Speaker of the lower house plaid his first prise in his assiduall disclosing to the King what soever past in the House insomuch as being discovered and on his usuall moving out of his Chair and the House he was at length withstood at the door by divers bold Gentlemen and Members of the Parliament and inforced to keep his seat this miscarriage was instantly made known to the King who took it as an affront done to his own person and presently hereupon he not only dissolves the Parliament but commits to the Tower Hammond and Hubbard Knights Long Curreton and some others of the Members Neither could he be a long time pacified by the Lords of his Councell on the first hearing of this broil but needs he would with his guard have then fallen upon them in the house as a presage of that violence which he offered after to this Assembly in his owne person upon the instant of this dissolution of the Parliament he publisheth a Proclamation prohibiting the people not so much as to talk of more Parliaments and injoyn'd the Lords of his Councell on any conditions not to mention the word Parliament unto him a lesson which they all for ten years together at least punctually observed insomuch as all wise men then conjectured that the Liberties of the Kingdom were then buried together in the interment of all Parliaments Ten if not more years past between this Parliament and the dissolution of that quinto Maij 1639. during this intervall the King begins roundly with all sorts of proâ—ects and to raise mony both without the leaves of the Subjects and against the known Lawes of the Kingdome privy Seals and Loans were the first which he put in execution as a Tax if we may so call them that concerned not so much the Subject in generall as private reputed moneyed men other levies had likewise their course in their torns and in policy not to rush in and too hastily on the subjects propriety he falls on the sale of the Crown lands in Peâ—farm with the old rents or those doubled reserved to the Exchequer neither could all these projects though amounting to a very vast sum serve to defray the wastefullnesse of the Court which indeed as to his own side was in some proportion of moderation yet on the Queens side it was so excessively profuse that I aver it on knowledge besides her Joynture then newly consigned one hundred thousand pound Per Annum sufficed not for to defray her own expences and confident I am what by sales procured by her solicitations as much more was yearly drayned out of the Kings purse to satisfie that nasty trayn of her French followers Madam Nurse as to her own particular besides an expencefull way of living here at the Kings charge was well known to have transported at several times into France 100000 pound in good gold and certaine it is that that Pigmy Mountebanck Mountague the Queens dancing Master not worth one groat at his coming over inricht himself to the least value of 40000 pound it would be wearisome to recount what summes her Priests and Jesuits Musitians Fidlers and others of her retinue got and amassed by her onely sute to the King who then denyed her nothing that she desired for it is most true that before she attained the age of twenty years she began of a Pupill to be the Kings Regent and the after-story will assure it she became a fatall participant with him in most of his Counsells and his directrix in the Government but after her Mothers arivall both of them to have gained an interest in his inmost secrets and principall transactions of State an evident truth and more than stood with the Kings honour much less than suited with the welfare of the Nation These prodigall expences at Court could not choose but impoverish the Kings exchequer whether very little of the Royall Revenue arrived as commonly prevented aforehand by assignations to one or other of the Courtiers hence followed the multiplicity of Monopolies the ingrossing of all the Pouder into the Kings store and that to be no otherwise vendible but at double rates to the former and usuall prises In order to these followed the preemption of all Tobacoes to the extreme beggering of the adventurers and planters in the West-Indian Islands Coat and Conduct money had likewise it's turne and by degrees the Kings
soon after was it's greatest Enemy and not by the Kings choise and inclination as it is shamefully averr'd in his Pourtraicture whereas the bare name and mention of a Parliament was well known to be odious unto him and the very motion of calling any more prohibited by his own expresse charge to all of his Councell of State as that which he foresaw would be the onely impediment to the accomplishment of all his arbitrary designes so meerly brought to their ends but the summer before he waged the first warre against his native subjects the Scots an enterprise which the World knowes was the only Remora that checkt and choaked all his projections in the maturity of their birth which to recover on sight and his sense of the Parliaments proceedings he soon found he had no other way left him but by open War and force to suppresse them the mannagery whereof I shall now briefly present unto you The Parliament had its Summons from Yorke as all the Kingdom knows and the third of November 1640. sate downe at Westminster where according to the usuall Ceremonies the King in his own person in a set speech made a very gracious protestation viz. That he was fully resolved to put himself wholy on the love of his People and Parliament which if it proved not prosperous and a happy Parliament the fault should be none of his and that he was fully determined to commit the reformation of all things amisse to their regulation A profession which both took much with the House and all the Kingdom which had he been pleased to have performed and to have made good his word in not protecting the many delinquents questioned within a few moneths after the Parliaments first sitting downe as with justice honour and his Coronation oath he was obliged and in reference to his owne profit he might very well have forborne such tragicall issues could never have befallen himself and the 3. Kingdoms but having then entertained other designs and perceiving the Parliament to fly high and at his chief Ministers and woork-masters of his former arbitrary projects and on those which had fomented that unnecessary Warre against the Scots as the Earl of Straf ford and the Arch-bishop principally the Prelates and dissolute Clergy most of the Iudges and the Farmers of the Customes not for common faults but very high misdemeanours the King to crosse them most ignobly and against the justice of the Kingdome not only provoked but openly shewed himselfe both a defendor and protector of their Delinquencies and upon the distast he took on the commitment of Strafford was instantly known to have laid sundry plots and practises how he might dissolve the Parliament or utterly to destroy it which the Parliament perceiving and that the Queen under colour of accompanying the Princesse Mary into Holland was sent thither with the Crowne Jewels to buy Arms and procure forces to be sent him and Digby employed to the same purpose whereupon in prevention of the storme which they evidently then saw was like to fall on themselves and the Kingdom from beyond sea they moved his Majesty that the Kingdom might be put into a posture of defence and the militia deposited in such hands as they might confide in which he utterly refused to grant them as inseparables to the Crowne as he alleaged he was resolved to keep solely in his own power The Parliament in answer to this insist That the Kings power therein by the Law of the Land was only fiduciary allwayes in reference to trust the publik good safety of the Kingdō hence the contest by degrees grew to a separation and in furtherance of the dispute he also denyed the house to disband the Irish Army raised long before by Strafford and compos'd of Papists a storm which could not otherwise be expected but would if not timely prevented fall on them from Ireland whereof the Juncto at their very first sitting down had sufficiently informed them out of Straffords own mouth for what use and end that Army was raised viz. where he tels the King you have an Army in IRELAND to reduce this Kingdome when it was manifestly known to the world that it never was in a greater calm of peace and quietnes and the universall people in a more absolute obedience and as ready to be ridden as any slaves under the Grand Signior During this conflict the King would needs take a journey into Scotland notwithstanding the House by sundry petitions had earnestly moved him either to lay it aside or at least for some time to retard it but howsoever the King carried on his plots intentions in the dark with as much cunning as possibly could be devised yet they had then good reason to suspect that his journey Northward was to some other end than in leaving them to visit his Scotch Parliament as it after proved but on he would for Scotland and before he took his journey in a seeming providence to disburthen the Kingdome of the charge of the Scotch Army he first prest the house to disband with all their expedition that Army and to pay pay that of his own raising in the North but not a word of disbanding it upon this motion the House took it into their serious consideration apprehending it for a provident carefull and timely motion of the Kings and thereupon bethought themselves how first to disband and quit the Kingdome of the Scots untill Mr. Stroude standing up told the Speaker That they ought not in such haste to depart with the Scotch Army lest the sonnes of Zerviah in their absence would be too hard for them this speech the house soon apprehended and instantly resolved not to disband the one without the other army which the King perceiving being daily prest with Petitions of the Officers of his own Army fot their pay and himselfe not possibly able to content them as also that 25000 l. per mensem allowed to the Scots Army with 300000 l. by way of brotherly love given them by the Parliament in compensation of their losses through the Kings needlesse and unnecessary molesting them during the two Summers before amounted in the totall to so vast a sum as that neither himself was able to contribute a groat or the Parliament otherwise to discharge but by borrowing it on the Publique Faith It would amaze those which are happily ignorant of the managery of this work if I should tell them in what extremity of want the King was then reduced and how he durst adventure to struggle and after to trip up the heels of a Court of Parliament which without the least upraiding him with his profusions and irregular Regality were not only willing and ready to pay all those vast scores of debts contracted through his own wilful misgovernment but then had it in agitation how to improve his Revenues and to inable him to live of himself without squeezing his Subjects in honour splendour and plenty beyond any
men bewitched and as I may say besotted with an incapacity or hardnesse of heart not to be convinced by any force of reason or arguments though providence it selfe visibly shews it out unto you that not only Gods special hand is in this great change of affairs but that he hath yet some greater worke depending on this which in his own good time he will bring to passe in throwing down that proud papall Monarchy and utterly to confound that man of sin who sits in the temple exaulting himselfe above God Sir Here may you be pleased to take in your more serious consideration by whom Kings reigne and cease to reigne and soberly to observe for what sins almighty God usually striks down the prowd Septers of Kings and binds their Nobles in chains of Iron and you may without presumption say and find it most true throughout all the sacred Scriptures that where Idolatry Injustice Oppression and Bloodshed have had predominance there Gods wrath hath inseparably attended the Authors and favorers and most severely punished those sins above all others and what in these sins have been either permitted acted or connived at by the late King howsoever faced out and denyed by himselfe and most of your party and his cause shamefully defended yet I suppose you cannot but acknowledge that they have not only been winked at but backt and authorised cnm privilegio And here give me leave to tell you that I have stood amazed at the impudence of your royal bookmen I shall only instance amongst ma ny in a sew as Judge Jenkins his Lex Terrae and other of his jugling fragments the Regall Apologie the Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae but especially in that grand imposture of the Kings Pourtracture in all which that they should give the plain lye to truth conceale and smother the true intent of the lawes of the Land and contradict the Kings own Letters and expresses written with his own hand augments the admiration and much the more that they should with such acerbity exclaime against the ripping up of the faults of the dead when they themselves give the occasion in their frequent invective Pamphlets against the Parliament and in their justifications of a Prince whose inclinations lead him to the fulfilling of his own will though to the apparent losse of his Crowne and his dearest friends so violently were his inclinations driven on to the accomplishing of his designs when as neither the junctoes of France Spaine Denmarke the States of Holland or scarce any Prince Christian though most of them of his nearest allyes and solicited by all the artifices that man could invent would owne owne him when they understood the wayes and enterprises he most wilfully undertook and all of them upon due examination as unnecessarily undertaken and needlesly pursued with as much violence and craft as if they had some necessary dependence on his own salvation and the safety of his people when as God knowes they were most destructive the mishapen and illegitimat births of his own willful inclinations Now it would not be much impertinent to the subject you have sent me if I should tell you that I find not any one Nation in the world that hath had any great reason to be overmuch inamored with their Kings sure I am neither of us both how different soever in our principles have had any great cause given us to dote on our last considered as he raigned in blood and oppression and handled the matter both with his friends and foes whether forraigne or domestick witnesse those needlesse Warres he ingaged himselfe against Spayn and France in the entrance of his reigne afterwards with the Scots but espetially with this Parliament and the subjects of three Kingdoms not only to the beggering of them but the ruine of himselfe and his posterity and yet is this most willfull and bloudy Prince the only King which your party have so much admired defended and believed living and dead adored and esteemed for a Saint and a Martyr Sir You are a Gentleman well verst in History I shall therefore take the boldnesse to advise you to take the right demensions of all the Kings you have read of either in the sacred scriptures or prophane observe well all their actings and I dare be bold to say that you shall very rarely find any of them which have strictly tyed themselves to the duty of their office or to have executed their powers otherwise than to the extream detriment of their Subjects take them wheresoever they have been admitted either by the suffrage of the people as that hath been the best means to keep them within the bounds of moderation or permitted by the absurdity of succession whether wisemen or fools whether Children or of mature years or assuming their Soveraignties by the power of their Swords and doubtlesse you shall find few of them which have been over-mindfull of the good and welfare of their people neither to have had any due retrospect to the right ends of Government and that salus populi the safety and good of their Subjects for which all Kings had their powers originally ordained and given them from God never for their own private interests which most of the Kings of the World have evermore studied to advance and generally per fas et nefas right or wrong indeavoured to inforce as in this point we have all of us had a late and a lamentable experience where take this in the way that without all dispute all Kingly power and that despoticall domination of that great hunter Nimrod which was first by him usurped by force and from him as the first pattern of Royalty dispersed throughout most parts of the World yet we find not in all the Scriptures any vestigia or authentick proof that the succeeding Kings of the Nations came to their powers by any immediate institution from God but only permissive though it is most true that when such powers were in being and how usurpatiously soever obtained yet submission hath been by God himself enjoyned to those which lived under them untill for their injustice and extreme Tyranny God in his justice determined to transferre their powers to others as you may transparently see he hath done in our late change since then other powers than Kingly are now with us in being you and I both which live under them are bound in conscience to submit and obey them for all powers are of God And let me remember you for its worth your observation that the Israelites for a long time had no Kingly Government but in Egypt in the Wildernesse and after in the Land of Canaan for many hundred years together were no other than Ambulans Respublica a walking Common-wealth and onely governed by Judges and the Princes of their respective Tribes never by the absolute power of any one man Moses himself having his assistants even the Princes of the People untill through their own wantonnesse and contempt of that Government
which God had set over them and in his providence and love towards them knew to be fittest for them they obstinately rejected the gentle government of Samuel and weary of their own happinesse surfeiting as they did in the Wildernesse on that delicious food of Quails and Manna and wishing for the flesh-pots of Egypt in imitation of the Heathen they thirsted after a King and not unlike to Esops Frogs they prest Samuel to change their quiet and peaceable Block into a furious and devouring Stork their freedom into slavery as first with these Arguments That thy sonnes walke not in thy wayes but have turn'd aside after lucre took bribes and perverted judgement foul faults indeed and happily too true for wheresoever power without grace is invested faults there will be and many times foul ones too But this was not all that they resented it was their ambition and desire of novelty in a vain-glorious affectation that swayed with them to be like their Neighbour Nations and to have an illustrious and pompous domination over them but how this pleased God that Chapter with others shews us in a very sad dialect for God in his wrath gave them a King according to their desires yet he commands Samuel to shew them what would be the manner of a King and what Tyrannies he would exercise over them howsoever their hearts being set on a Kingly Goverment a glorious thing indeed in the outward shew and splendor thereof have a King they would without more dispute alleging other Arguments to Samuel viz. That he may judge over us go out before us and fight our battels But how most of their Kings executed judgement and what needlesse battles they fought for them and how much bloud of theirs was in many of their Kings reignes willfully and profusely spilt by most of the Kings of Judah and Israel as also what taxes and tributes were unnecessarily imposed on them their own Chronicles will best inform you and all this Kingly work what doth it amount unto more than to fullfill the will and pleasure and to maintain the pompe and splendor of one man and his whole family in the open and privileged oppression of a whole Nation Now if the History of the Kings of Iudah and Israel be not sufficient to inform your judgement of the oppressions and Tyrannies exercised by most of their Kings as a just judgement of God on the whole Nation for I may of truth aver that they were a stubborn generation and God answerable to their own hearts desires gave them their belly full of Kings when it was too late for their repentance then you may pick and chuse amongst all the Kings of the World and you shall find the best of them little better than Tyrants yea David himself a a man of blood and most perfideous in the case of honest Vriah and as the greater Fish in the Sea which eats up the lesser so Kings on the Land are commonly no more than Canniballs man-eaters and as a good Author describes them to be ex genere bestiarum rapacium a sort of ravenous beasts an undenyable truth especially where absolute Soveraignty is usurped by any one man and that derived in a succession which is the evill of all evils and the very same which your malignant party so vehemently drives at to introduce on the English Nation and to inslave a free borne people when your self being a rationall man very well knows that no man ab origine was born a slave but either by his own consent or by the ambition and pleasure of Tyrants was made so for who koows not that all men are of the self-same mold as Kings neither were Kings ever ordaind of God to govern their people otherwise than for their good never to be opprest and trampled on at theit own wills and lustfull pleasures But happily you may here charge me to intrench and presse with the most on the Honour and Power of Kings I answer I honour them as Gods own Ordinance amongst other Powers and am commanded by the Apostle to make prayers and supplications for them all especially for Kings and great reason we all have so to do lest they devoure us alive but if they presume to break over those limits and boundaries which Almighty God hath set unto them as of those and what they are you may best instruct your felfe out of Deutronomy and Ezekiel where you shall finde the King to be tyed up to strict rules as to read the law and to observe it all the dayes of his life that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren and as the Prophet tels them take away your exactions from my people remove violence and spoyl and execute judgement and justice c. Vpon these considerations I hope you will not blame me though I have not made one amongst so many which have sided with our late King in raising of war against his people and their Representative neither in plundring and desolating the Kingdom which howsoever those exorbitances amongst other of his faults have been palliated with as much finenesse of wit as the art of man could possibly devise yet I beseech you let truth appear which with a little of your patience you may more fully understand and then happily you will adjudge him guilty of much more than hath beene yet vulgarly charged on his accompt in the mean time remember our blessed Saviours oracle That it is fit offences should be but woe to those which occasion them Excuse me then though I tell you that I know none more guilty of the occasion of all our barbarous and brutish wars bloodshed rapine and of the imminent danger and utter desolation which at present threatens and hangs over three late flourishing Kingdoms than he who ended his vexatious dayes at his own gates and she which had the Honour of his bed together with her which was the mother and of all the mischiefs which befell all the places wheresoever she made her abode But happily you may again reply that I speak as a loser and true and so may you and one hundred thousand more of poore innocent sufferers speake in the same sad dialect as having felt the fearfull effects of the perversity of one mans will who in the power of a moderate SOVERAIGNTY and the love of his people by whom and by this very Parliament so hatefull unto him never any King of England was more honoured beloved obeyed and more courted and when time was might have been what a just Prince would have desited and should I aske you what might he not have been had he either at first and long after this Parliament late downe yea and long after the Warre began complyed with them as great reason there was he should have done and not to have protected Delinquents neither to have sided with such as most treacherously deserted their trust but to have relyed as at first he promised on his faithfull Councell
of the Roman Church a truth so perspicuous as that I have wondred on the reading of the discourse between his Majesty and those learned Divines why it was not prest by them that Episcopacy quatenus as it stood here since and before the Reformation was spurious papall and of no affinity with the Apostlick or primitive institution especially the wonder is so much the more that the King for the upholding of 26 square caps should with such obstinancy which he would have to be esteemed constancy oppose a Court of Parliament composed of 500 Lords and Gentlemen and pretend so much to honour and conscience when as about the same time and as I remember before that the dispute was here in the House for the expulsion of the Bishops the King had granted the same boon to the Scots But I beseech you take notice how mindfull the King was to remember his friends and what were they think you more than Delinquents Soldiers of Fortune and the loosest vermin that the Kingdom could afford him together with the Papists many Country Gentlmen and the Fugitive Members of both Houses which he had corrupted and drawn from their trust with double ends of his own not onely to make up his mungrell Parliament at Oxford but to lame or destroy the legall Parliament at Westminster whose privileges with so many protestations he had so often aver'd to maintain In the next place please you to observe how memorative the King was to put a short period to this perpetuall Parliament for this expression manifestly shewes how he intended to deal with all others a Parliament as himself had made it indissolvable by any other way than that of the Sword which by no meanes he meant to depart withall until needs he must and the act assented and granted by himself on reasons merely relative to the payment of his owne debts contracted by his unnecessary raising of War against his Native Subjects the Scots and for the more speedy discharge of the arrears due to both armies which the Parliament was then most willing to defray without the least scruple or upbraiding him with the cause of contracting so vast a sum and all to gain at any rate his love and favour where I must tell you that you would have thought it somewhat harsh should they have told him as it was answered in full Parliament to Hen the third that they would not pay his debts neither give him a groat postquam coepit esse dilapidator regni so long as he continued to destroy the Kingdom but you cannot deny how ready they were to expedite the payments by taking it up of the City on the publick faith which the Citizens on remembrance of the Kings wonted manner of dissolving of all the Parliaments of his Reign without their due effects utterly refused unlesse an Act were past for the continuation of the Parliaments sitting upon which grounds the King granted that act which so nearly concerned his own particular and the sending home of the Scots whose company was then loathsome unto him How then it comes to passe that your selfe and so many of your party should think this such an act of Grace seems to me a wonder when he had so often protested not onely to maintain the Privileges of Parliament but whatsoever acts he had formerly assented unto but you see here his own expression That he would not forget to put a short period to this perpetuall Parliament what then I beseech you do you conceive would have been the issues otherwise than to recall all those his so much magnified acts of grace as Edward the third yeelded him a president and at last by the power of the Sword which he sayes God had put into his hands to have invaded the Lawes and universall freedomes of the Nation as his very next Letter to the Queen manifestly imports March 9. 1645. from Oxford number the 20th viz. I have thought of one means more to furnish thee withall for my assistance than hitherto thou hast had it it this that I give thee power to promise in my name to whom thou thinkest most fit that I will take away all penall Laws against the Roman Catholicks in England as soon as God shall inable me to doe it so as by their means or in their favours I may have so powerfull assistance as may deserve so great a favour and inable me to do it but if thou aske what I call that assistance I answer that when thou knowest what may be done for it it will be easily seen if it deserve to be so esteemed I need not tell thee what secrecy this businesse requires yet this I will say that this is the greatest point of confidence I can expresse to thee for it is no thanks to me to trust thee in any thing else but in this which is the onely thing in difference of opinion betwixt us and yet I know thou wilt make as good a bargaine in this I trusting thee though it concerns Religion as if thou wert a Protestant the visible good of my affairs so much depending thereon Observation The Comment on this his Majesties 20th Letter principally relates to these two most important considerations first the invading of the Laws secondly to the affront of the Parliament and the Protestant Religion when he should be impowred by the assistance of the Papists and a third necessarily ariseth on the neck of the other two viz. by giving power to the Queene a profest Papist and an enemy to the English Nation to manage the businesse and to make the best bargain for him as she should thinke most fit under the seale of secrecy as being himself ashamed to be seen in the businesse as God knowes good reason he had But in the mean time speak your Conscience where was then the Kings Conscience and his honour and what became of his former protestations wherein he so often avows the maintenance of the Protestant Religion without mixtures and what was his own Religion more than formall or like a nose of wax convertible onely as it should conduce to the visible good of his affaires they are his owne words and what those affaires were more than his will and pleasure in his uttermost endeavour to continue to imbrue the Kingdomes with more blood and rapine by the swords and assistance of Papists cannot well be imagined these and a world of his other expressions compared together with his own Letters and his Pourtraicture I must tel you plainly have very much troubled my spirits that he should so much and so often pretend to Religion Conscience and Honour in yeelding up of Episcopacy when he made no scruple of Conscience to grant to the Scots the abolishing of their Episcopacy which in the Chapter of Church-Government in his Pourtraicture he strives to salve with an ill savoring playster but for the retention of it in England he pleads and stands stiffly on his Coronation Oath with the swallowing up
such as here he promiseth the Queen should be both to his honour and advantage and he renders the reason viz. That he was then left free to himselfe to doe as he listed and as his inclinations should prompt him as being quit of those base and mutinous motions of his mungrell Parliament at Oxford where you may observe how well Parliaments suited with the nature of this King for this at Oxford which was of his own designe and calling of set purpose to annihilate the legall Parliament at Westminster was as himself stiles it a base mutinous and mungrel Parliament and he might with good reason so accompt of it for they were indeed a sort of perfidious Fugitives false to themselves and their Countreyes and the King no doubt in his own thoughts esteemed them no other for such as would be fals to themselves the King was not to seek to make his own judgement what they would be to him on the turn of any tyde of advantage but that at Westminster he calls a Rebell Parliament though of his own first Summons The truth was none would or could please him neither any councell but such as futed to his own will and pleasure It s true and it is confest that after he had lost all and was a prisoner he seemed more inclinable to embrace peace and to that end sent his frequent Messages to the Parliament but evermore with the old scruples of his Conscience and Honour persisting to his last as being fed with hopes of the generall rising 1647. and the comming in of the Scots under Hamilton to wind himself up again to that power whither his restlesse ambition to be more absolute than he ought to have been lead him to the precipice of his own ruine and it is more than probable that during the last Treaty in the Isle of Wight and the expectation of the successe of that rising to his rescue he had a perfidious hand therein for it cannot be imagined that such an association of English Scots and Welch would ever in one conjuncture of time adventure to rise without either his Privity or Commission howsoever it is manifestly known that both the English and Welch had for their undertaking the Princes Commission under hand and seale neither is it likely that the Prince himself during a Treaty so neer a period to an attonement would either authorize that rising or to have approached at that very time with his Fleet so near the Thames mouth without either his Fathers Commission or approbation the perfidie shewed therein I am more than confident utterly lost him and was a principall canse that the Parliament could not in reason or with safety of themselves and the King dom readmit or trust such a Prince with the government of whose Reformation they could not but despair Observations upon the Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae IT is worth his pains who desires to berightly informed of the truth of al passages and transactions between the late King and the Parliament his mysterious motions pretences and carriages both during all the warres and since his death how matters have been managed by his partakers especially by those which first published his Pourtraicture and him who hath taken such pains in collecting so many of his papers printing exposing and dispersing them throughout all parts of the Kingdom purposely both to deceive the people and malitiously to work upon the facility of their affections in commiseration of him and casting an odium on the Parliament The artifice which this Impostor uses is worth consideration as he hath garnished the approaches to his collections with the Kings picture in some places standing in others kneeling and as it were ejaculating his prayers to God and those drest with sundry devices and motto's and all this to invite the eye if not the understanding of the silly beholder to a beleef that he died an innocent Martyr a Prince who suffered for his restlesse endeavor to desend the Protestant Religion the Laws and Libertyes of his Subjects as he would intimate by his hudling of the Kings many specious and fraudulent overtures for peace to the Parliament and avoyding of future bloodshed In all the Catalogue of his one and twenty Messages of the Kings besides additionalls he is pleased not so much as to insert one of the Parliaments Answers in rejoynder to any of the Kings Messages onely taking in so many of his Majesties which he conceived might serve his turn to clear the Kings innocency and leaving out such of the Parliaments most materiall Missives to which the King omitted to give any answer at all as for instance let him produce what reply the King made to the Parliaments charge for Ruperts intercepting of the Clothes Provisions horses and other necessaries sent by the Parliament in the way to Chester for the releef of the relicts of the poor Protestants in Ireland true it is that long after an answer was such as it was made though not by him mentioned viz. that those provisions might have been better guarded a proper answer if you please to take notice of it when its mostevident that the Kings forces not only took them with his expresse command but drew over the principall Commanders and Soldiers before sent by the Parliament to his own assistance against the Parliament now that you may see how the active part of the war was carried on by the King take into your serious considerations his Message of the 15 of April 1642. from Huntington wherein he earnestly desires That the Parliament will use all possible industry in expediting the businesse of Ireland in which they shall finde so cheerfull a concurrence by his Majesty that no inconvenience shall happen to that service by his absence he having all that passion for the reducing of that Kingdome which he hath expressed in his former Messages being unable to manifest more affection to it than he hath endeavonred to do by those Messages having likewise done all such acts as he hath been moved unto by his Parliment therefore if the misfortunes and calamities of his poor Protestant Subjects there shall grow upon them though his Majesty shall be deeply concerned in and sensible of their sufferings he shall wash his hands before all the world from the least imputation of slacknesse in that most necessary and pious work Observation A very pious work indeed as himself ordered it if you please to examine it to the bottome then make your own judgement whether it was not the Kings reach to gull the Parliament by pressing them to expedite the sending of Forces to the relief of his poor Subjects of Ireland and with such words of pity and expressions of his remorse how deeply he was concerned therein and how sensible of their sufferings and calamities which might grow upon them and just Pilate-like to wash his hands before all the world from the least imputation of slacknesse in him when 't is manifest his meaning was both to make
in this Quarrel and cheerfully embrace it and as no other reasons induced us to leave our City of London but that with honour and safety we could not stay there nor to raise any force but for the necessary defence of our Person and the Law against Levies in opposition to both so we shall suddenly return to the one and disband the other as soon as those causes shall be removed the God of Heaven direct you and in mercy divert those judgements which hang over the Nation and deale so with us and our posterity as we desire the preservation and advancement of the true Pretestant Religion the Law and the Liberty of the Subject the just rights of Parliament and the peace of the Kingdom Sept. 11. 1642. Observations on the former three Messages of the Kings In these three Messages we have as specious and pious expressions in shew as possibly can be expected from a King that meant really as he writ and said as he thought But on a due consideration of all passages and the subject matter in them contained and as the case then stood betwixt him and the Parliament with as much subtilty craft and cunning as can well be devised by the subtilest Disciple of Machavill I shall take the liberty to comment and prove the assertion out of the first of these Messages of the 25 of August 1642. and so in order to the rest as they visibly shew out unto any rationall man their purport without drawing other Conclusions than necessarily arise out of the expressions themselves compared with the Kings other Declarations his actions and his own private Letters First he tels the Parliament With what unspeakeable griefe of heart he beheld the distractions of the Kingdom untill he could find out a remedy to prevent the miseries which were ready to hang over the whole Nation by a civill Warre Where I pray tell me who first gave the occasion who raised those distractions or made the first preparations to a civill warre other than himselfe Next he speaks of differences betwixt him and the Parliament which he confesseth to have arisen through mistakes of the Messages Petitions and Answers betwixt him and his two Houses of Parliament which he would have prevented by a Treaty wherein the matters in difference might be more clearly understood and more freely transacted And could there have been a more fitter place to debate them with honour and freedome than in the Parliament whither with welcome he might have come without the least danger to his person and whither he was so often and humbly invited to come on no other conditions but to make him great and glorious and leaving Delinquents which he protected against Law and Reason to the discretion of the great Judicature of the Nation which would have been both a safe a profitable and a short course for him to have yeelded unto and saved him the labour of a dishonourable descending out of his dyning room to dispute those differences with the States of the Kingdome in the Kitchin and without so many impertinencies ambages and subterfuges wherewith he solaces himself seemingly moving for authorizing of fit persons on both sides to debate the matter with freedome a very fine way indeed and about the wood when he might have sate still in peace and quietnesse and left the obliquities of the Church and State to those to whom they properly belong'd to be disputed regulated and set straight whilst himself without such an unnecessary and un-Kingly engagement might have taken his pleasure in hunting the Buck rather than to have needlesly all that Summer traversed his ground through so many Counties in hunting after men to kill the best and most faithfull of his Subjects could he have had the grace to have seen it of his whole Kingdome But then he comes to an other overture that if on securing of such Treators as himselfe should chuse and the like safety by him given to such as the Parliament shall design for a Treaty then there shall be nothing wanting on his part to the advance of the true Protestant Religion the Lawes the Liberty of the Subject and just Priviges of Parliament as to Religion can any man beleeve that knew how hee was principled that he would have yeelded to other than that formall and prelaticall Protestantisme which he had vowed to uphold As to the Laws should they have beene other than should still have lain under his negative power As to the Libertyes of the Subject what should they have been more than the Militia his Sword then drawn against them would permit as he pleased to like or dislike As to the Privileges of Parliaments which he takes care to confine with his Epithite Just in the promse he makes what should they have been but as they might suite to the best advantage of the Crown and his unlimitable Prerogative then he concludes that if that Proposition be rejected he appeals to God and the World that he had don his duty which would absolve him from the guilt of that blood which he sayes must be spilt and I beleeve him for it seems he meant then to spill blood as he did afterwards more than befitted a Christian King rather than to have mist of the accomplishment of any of his resolutions having ingraved on his Sword aut Caesar aut nullus Caesar or no body to one of which he attain'd his close seems to me both monitory and minitory for he gives the Parliament to understand how he was provided and what they were to trust to in telling them aforehand That whatsover opinion other men have of our power our provision of men money and arm are such as may secure us from further violence till it shall please God to open the eyes of our people a very brave invitation to peace with the Sword in his hand to inforce it as he pleased to have it and with an Army of 6000 Horse and 11000 Foot as elsewhere he sayes he had ready to chastise the Rebels But look over to his Chapter upon seizing of the Forts Castles Navy and the Militia there he disclaimes to have had any other arms than those of the Primitive Christians prayers and tears against their Persecutors where he is pleased in a strange contradiction to make that an Argument of his not raising the first War against the Parliament though as it is well known at Edgehill he came with 20000 well armed men into the field with a full resolution to beat the Parliament to fitters how you will peece these contradictions together I leave as a task to you it being beyond my power to reconcile such distant Asseverations Now to his Message of the 5th of Sept. in pursuance of the former he sayes That he never did or ever intended to declare both our Houses of Parliament Traytors or to set up our Standard against them and yet at that instant had proclaimed my Lord of Essex the Earl of Stamford and all their Adherents
made Levies either against him or the Law more than his own lawlesse Will and that the Parliament made no sooner Levies than it became them to oppose his Levies raised against them and the known Laws of the Land and that notwithstanding all those specious and umbragious Messages sent to the Parliament for Peace and Accommodation tending to no other end than to rocke the Parliament asleep and by his then frequent placentias to lull them into a slack and negligent remissnes in raising defensive arms against his Forces whilst himself by protracting of time might attract such an Army as would inable him to overpower both the Parliament and whatsoever Forces were as he sayes then in their march against him which he had no sooner drawn together but out of his confidence to have beaten the Parliaments Army to peeces not eight dayes before Edgehill fight he not onely utterly refused their Petion which would have been presented to him by the mediation of the Earl of Dorset for he had a good space before refused all accommodation but sent Rupert to the Commissary Generall who was to deliver it to tell the Earl of Essex then at Worcester that he would not receive any more Petitions from him or any of the Parliament Rebels of them all A known truth to many yet living and some of them sitting at present in Parliament whereby it manifestly appears that all his former and many Missives under the umbrage of Peace were mere dalliances both to mock the Parliament and to cosen the people into a belief of his reality and good meaning when he meant nothing more than to bob the Parliament by cunning and secret fraud untill he might ruine them by plaine and open force and then to pursue those naturalized appetites and arbitrary designes of his which so long before he had cherished in his heart which neither his Honour Reason and his Conscience whereof so often he talks could prevail with him to disgorge untill their over-growth inforced him to an untimely vomit 'T is most true that they which look on the first face of things and heed only the outside of objects without an intentive eye on their in-sides are easily deceived but such as will narrowly looke into all his Expresses compared with his deeds shall doutlesse soon finde that this unhappy King was one of the deepest and boldest dissemblers of any one Prince which the last Century hath produced and I am prone to beleeve that he took too much of the patterne of Lews th' eleventh of France who was wont to say that he desired to leave his Sonne no other Learning than Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare he that knows not to dissemble knowes not how to play the King and it hath been feared and by those which wisht him well that he was too much verst in the principles of Machiavill having in his life time practised and since his death left behind him so many eevidences thereof that many of the best heads have been induced to beleve that he came not behind any of the ITALIAN Polititians of this age But to take all these his three Messages together considered by any discreet man as their purport tends to one and the selfesame end and the time when they were sent to the parliament all of them whilst he was most busie and sedulously studious how and where to raise Forces both at home and abroad and it evidently shews that his intent in all his specious overtures of peace were to no other end than to befool the People and Parliament which he then began to know would not be cosened as having had sufficient experience of him practise indeed he might as he failed not to continue to delude the vulgar beleef and to keep in with the people but he then found there was no good to be done on a Court of Parliament for he perceived they meant not further to trust him than they saw him and to have yeelded to a treaty circumscribed with such large conditions and so unequally ballanced as so admit of such as he should send to treat with them out of Parliament which not unlikely would have been of those that had both deserted the Parliament and falsified their faith which to have indempnified and all other Delinquents as had repaired unto his assistance otherwise no peace with him what effects could a Treaty produce so much upbraided by his party on the Parliament for refusing it other than mockery when himself knew as well as themselves that they would not yeeld unto such a motion neither himself goe lesse than to take off all the Delinquents with impunity against all reason law and the antient president of all former Parliaments that alone being the greatest breach of privilege that ever was offered to a Court of Parliament and such a destructive project to the essence and being of Parliaments as in the future took away all power and privilege from them and necessarily conferr'd it on his own usurped Prerogative his negative claim being no more and scarce so much to enable him to doe in the future as he listed when as every vulgar spirit knowes it for Law that the King cannot neither ever durst any of our Kings rescue one Prisoner at the Bar out of the hands of Justice in any of the inferiour Courts of the Kingdome 'T is true that Henry of Monmouth being a rude Prince though after a tollerable King came openly and with violence to the Kings Bench in Westminster Hall and rescued Poynes his Servant arraigned for robbing and taking away the Kings Treasure at the Bar but the story tells us that the Judges laid the Prince by the heels for his pains and his Father the King thankt them for it much lesse then that this King should presume to rescue so many viperous Delinquents out of the justice of the great Judicature of the Nation which all of common reading know have acted sundry times in such a power as to depose severall of his Ancestors for their Tyrannies and hanged many of their chiefe Instruments Presidents which with good reason he might have more timely remembred and not have stood with his Sword in his hand to inforce so unjust senslesse and unreasonable a Proposition for a Treaty Observations on the Kings Pourtracture THe Kings Book which hath flown abroad and throughout the Kingdom as it were between the wings of Mercury and hath so much taken in the opinion of the vulgar beliefe and esteemed to be such an impregnable rampier incirculating his innocency that it hath been thought not assaultable I confesse at the first sight thereof it took for a while as his protestations formerly had done in many apprehensions but on a second consideration of the title The Kings Image with the dresse that is bestowed upon his Effigies in a posture of devotion in imitation of David in his ejaculations to Heaven surely I could not beleeve that such a peece of vanity was of the Kings designment
more necessary than to be imployed in the slaughtering of the English with the hazard of their own lives and for no other end but to advance their own prodigious and bloody designs for observe it in the former Letter he manifestly declares his resolution to call them over to his assistance and heere he tells it that as to the Irish if the taking away of Poynings act and the penall Statutes against Papists by a Law will do it he shall not thinke it a hard bargaine provided they freely and vigorously engage against his English and Scotish Rebels for which no conditions can be too hard not being against Conscience and Honour here you may safely aver is one of the strangest Consciences and an Honour so illimitable as that I am confident the subtillest Logitian in his Oxford Garrison would be driven to his ne plus ultra to give either of them a right definition that close of not being against Conscience or Honour considered with his former commands to Ormond without doubt is one of the finest peeces of Non-sense that ever I have seen and surely had I been in the Marquesses place that very restriction in the close would have made me to forbear the putting in execution of any of his commands for there was not a syllable of them all but in due construction was or ought to have been against his Conscience and Honour sure it was point blank opposite to his many Protestations and that fearfull imprecation of his Damnation on his receiving the Sacrament at Christ-Church and doubtlesse in my understanding all parts of this Letter considered the very last clause of not being against Conscience or Honour would have been sufficient warrant for me to have sate still and done nothing towards the concluding of so Irreligious and dishonourable a Peace But I beseech you look upon the Kings ends and you shall find them to be no other than in a brutish manner to set all his Subjects together by the ears to kill and make havock of one anothea English against English Scots againt Scots and Irish against both so that he might thereby accomplish his own pernitious designes And in the mean time to make no manner of scruple or Conscience of spilling of Innocent bloud without the least remorse of that horrible Massacree of 200000 of the English Nation butchered by those barbarous Villains for whom he was so solicitous to defend them and to procure a happy peace for them whatsoever it cost and with so many wiles and fetches he had so often endeavoured to engage them to joyne with Ormond against Inchiquine and the Scots as that you may evidently see in the Postscript of his Letters to him number 24. 1644. from Oxford as also in his Commissions to Montrosse first to ruine the Scots and after to come for his assistance into England Now that you may further understand what Conscience he made of bloodshed and what care he had to preserve his Subjects in Peace and Prosperity I shall tell you another story from the mouth of one of his principall Commanders Gerrard by name who upon the rendition of his Oxford Garrison came to London and made his addresses to Sir John Merricke at Essex house desiring him that he might have the Honour to kisse my Lord of Essex his hands Sir John told him That he had not behaved himself worthy of the name and honour of a Soldier to be admitted to such a favour having barbarously burnt his Lordships house at Lamphey together with most of the Gentlemens houses of the County of Pembroke and destroyed the whole Country even to desolation Gerrard replies in his usuall Oath God damme me Uncle if I did more than the King from Cardiffe by two severall Letters strictly commanded me to doe and then to march to him with all my Army for which I have his Majesties owne Letters for my Warrant Here is an excellent Conscience and care in a King bound by his Oath to preserve his Subjects from violence and yet commanding to destroy them with fire and rapine Sir in a few words more would you be pleased on an exact perusall of all this most unhappy Kings Declarations and transactions considered as you shall alwayes finde them sweetned and gilded over with the plausible pretences and specious professions of his love and care towards all his Subjects when he meant nothing lesse and many of them confirmed with Imprecations I say compare them diligently with his actions and the Letters of his own hand writing which of other evidences are the best keyes to unlock the secrets of mans heart not leaving out that Posthumus Imposture of his Pourtraicture and I am confident that the contrariety dissimulation hypocrisie and juglings you shall every where finde in them interwoven with a Pharisaicall justifying of himself and defending all his actions will astonish you as they have done me For in all the late horrid War and bloudshed throughout the three Kingdomes you shall find it for an infallible truth that he who spake and insisted so much on his Honour and Coscience for many years together never made any Conscience or was truely sensible of all the blood spilt either in his own behalf or against him more than of one wicked Mans though condemned by Law and the just judgement of a Court of Parliament and this man also acknowledged by himself to be uttterly unworthy to bear any publick office in the Common-wealth and untill God in his Iustice turnd the power of his Sword to nothing then indeed and as I may judge really he ever now and anon deplores the sad condition of his Kingdomes but never sincerely as I am bound to beleeve till he had don his worst and all that possibly he could invent to ruine the Parliament and to destroy all those that stood up in their defence And towards his last his principall labour tended to little more than in pittying of himselfe and complaining of the hard measure offered him during his restraint that he was not admitted to a Personall Treaty with the Parliament for the procuring as he would have it beleeved of a happy peace when in all his Treatyes and specious overtures from the first to the last his hand was well known to be in one plot or other how to get himselfe out of that toyle and Labyrinth wherein he had wilfully intangled himselfe and the Kingdomes being still one and the self same man justifying himself and standing on his own innocency with the Pharisee but little of the Publican God be mercifull to me a sinner still in his wonted inflexibility to the last utterly refusing to signe onely Four Bils for the publick security continuing his usuall pretences that they were against his Conscience and Honour When as all the Kingdome long since knew him to be preingaged to the Queen and that by one word of her mouth both his Honour and Conscience would easily have been dispenc'd withall This I may truly