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
play for raising of Treasure without consent of Parliament by arbitrary projects whereof amongst many which followed he begins with that of Knighthood and calls to account under colour of an old obsolete Law all such Gentlemen and others within the limitation of that Statute as attended not his Coronation though by his own Proclamation he had before forbidden their attendance Shortly after comes in to his service Sir Thomas VVentworth who to shew what he would be and how serviceable to the Kings designes he might be was imployed into the North where he rigorously levyed a very considerable summe on the Gentlemen and Yeomen of those parts VVeston another of these Arbitrary beagles as an overseer to the Earle of Pembroke and other Commissioners was imployed into the West the treasure which was by this lawlesse project raised being come together was a very vast sum but it was as soon issued as levyed and served not to defray the moity of the Court expences insomuch as being still necessitated very shortly thereupon another Parliament was thought fit to be summoned this was no sooner assembled but the House of Commons on the tenth of May 1626. Charged the Duke of Buckingham with the late Kings death and sent up their Charge to the Lords the King being well acquainted therewith comes into the Peers House and tels them that he could be a witnesse to clear the Duke in evry particular of that charge and thereupon in terrour to the lower House by his Warrant under his hand attacheth and sendeth to prison Sir Dudly Diggs and Sir John Elliot as those which had the managery of that affair notwithstanding the House of Commons having the proofes and examinations in preparation against the Duke the King to make all sure and in arrest of farther proceedings against his chief privado the 15 of Iune following in a great rage dissolves that Parliament and on dis-robing himself said in a very stern comportment That it should be the last time he would ever put them on And here we may take into observation the lamentable effects of that innated duritie that naturall obstinacy and perversnesse of the violent will of this most unhappy Prince who in affront and despight of the Iustice of a Court of Parliament would not suffer his own Fathers death to be called to accompt or any further examination thereof to be taken for clearing the Duke But Gods Iudgments may not be arested and it is he that mauger the teeths of all humane powers will in his own good time bring to light and to Iudgment that crying sinne of Blood and have we not seen this verified to our amazement the Duke shortly thereupon to have dyed by the stab of a knife with no other words or prayers in his mouth than Gods wounds I am slaine and this most unhappy Prince to have ended his dayes at his own Gates by the axe of Gods just judgment and as we may say in fear and trembling to have taken his leave and last farewell of this world with no other acknowledgment of his faults and of those crying sinnes of bloodshed throughout the three Kingdomes but that of a Pharasaicall justifying of himself and his innocency insisting to his last without any repentance or sensibilitie of so much innocent blood spilt through his only willfulnesse but only of one wicked mans having throughout the whole course of the late and lamentable contest between him and the Parliament evermore covered over that stubbornnesse of his naturall inclination with those false colours and delusive umbrages of his Conscience Constancy and Reason as if his Conscience by divine appointment had been the Master Conscience of all the Kingdom and his Reason that ipse dixit that must overballance and regulate the sense and Iudgment of a Court of Parliament And have we not seen those bold and principall instruments of his whom he imployed in all his arbitrary projects the Earl of Strafford and the Archbishop of Canterbury for the enslaving of the three Kingdoms condemned to the block as misleaders of their incorrigible Master and to have taken their leaves of the world in the same pharasaicall way of justifying their innocency and without so much as one word of the repentant Publican God be mercifull to me a sinner and yet all of them by the seduced Malignant party held still in a kind of veneration and I know not by what strange delusion reputed for innocents and martyrs would they but look upon them as they were the actors and known fomenters of all the miseries we have suffered yea the only ingines and instruments whereby to have wound up soveraignty to the highest pitch of Tyranny and to make their Master instead of a King over Gentlemen and Freemen a Tyrant over slaves But having brought the King and his young Queen neere to the metropolis of the Kingdom and the sicknesse decreasing I shall in a short narration describe the after deportmeut of this most unfortunate prince Instead of Prayers and humiliations to God for his great mercy in the miraculous stay of that raging pestilence whereby 3. 4. and 5000 weekly died that summer only in London the Court notwithstanding was instantly in Iolity Masques Dancings Playes and Banquets all in expencefull and sumptuous ostentations were the frequent and assiduall exercises of the Court on the one side as to devotion the Queene had her Masse and Masse-Priests on the other side the King with his Laodicean luke-warme and fawning Prelates in a meer formality in shew of Godlinesse God knowes without the power thereof and in as neer a complyance one to the other as possibly their different devotion could permit And here I must not omit neither exempt out of the scene that part which the Bishops and Prelates acted in this interlude Comicall we may call it as to the beginning thereof but God knowes tragicall enough in the close The Bishops which in the former reigne had for divers reasons of State been admitted to the old Kings privacies and had speciall Influence on his Counsells were likewise transmitted to the favour and indulgency of this King but more especially in reference to the Presbytery of Scotland so averse to absolute Soveraignty so much affected by either King A Generation of Vipers which on any terms would have eaten the way to preferment through the entrayls of either Church or State these were the men the better to ingratiate themselves into the Kings favour that spared not to insinuat how dangerous the Puritan party here in England was as of a fraternity with the Presbyterians of Scotland would be if not timely lookt unto to the advance of Soveraignty apprehensions which as they soon took fire with the father so as much if not more with the sonne hence it was that the most active of them were admitted either to his favour or Councel of State but especially Doctor Laud the Bishop of London after Archbishop of Canterbury a person of a very
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
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
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
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
THE LIFE AND REIGNE OF King CHARLS Or the Pseudo-Martyr discovered With a late Reply to an Invective Remonstrance against the Parliament and present Government Together with some Animadversions on the strange contrariety between the late Kings publick Declarations Protestations Imprecations and his Pourtracture compared with his private Letters and other of his Expresses not hitherto taken into common Observation Istud est sapere non solùm ea quae ante Pedes videre sed futura prospicere Seneca London Printed for W. Reybold at the signe of the Unicorn in Pauls Church-yard 1651. The Preface TO write the Lives of Princes in another world and fallen through their owne frailties or by the influence of others counsells from the high pitch of Soveraignty for regality is a slippery precipice in charity may be allowed a faire and favourable memoriall but for a King falling by the high hand of Justice not for common faults and frailties incident to humane nature but presumptuous sins sins of lood perfidie cruelty rapine wilfully perpetrated in the face of God and man and without any remorse to pursue the destruction not of one but three flourishing Kingdoms such desperate and violent Princes deserve no other favour than to be set out to the life of their Tyrannous actions though in pitty to him who hath already paid his debt to Nature and his offences much of his exorbitant government and irregular motions might and doubtlesse would have been concealed more tenderly intreated and himselfe sufferered to rest where he is in the silent grave had not that madnesse of his defeated surviving party by their indefatigable instigations given frequent occasion of taking over the ashes of him who living without injury to truth and his memory it may be said that rather than to have failed in the accomplishing of his designs had it layn in in his power he would have set the World on fire It was an unhappy and no iningenious expression of him who hath written it That there were a sort of men borne to the world not so suffer it to be at rest a sentence not more true than made good in this most unhappy King had this been put in addition neither himselfe to take his owne rest and sleep as he could not quietly and peaceably like other men I am not ignorant what senslesse maxims and ridiculous principles have gotten credit in the World as undoubted Oracles indisputably to be obeyed as that de mortuis nil nisi bona but by no means to tread on the sacred Urne of Princes though living never so vicious and exorbitant as if death had bequeathed unto them a supersedeas for the covering over their faults and licencious reignes and to close them up in the Coffin of Oblivion with a ne plus ultra not to admit of the least mention that they had done amisse when many thousands of oppressed and desolated families must stand mute whilest the malicious partizans of an irregular King take a liberty to themselves to vindicate his indefensible actions and not so content but asperse and scandalise those that opposed him in his cruelties and likewise would perswade others to adore him for a Saint and an innocent martyr whose Fathers Brothers and Friends have been most barbarously slain to fulfill the lust and pleasure of one wilfull man if to speake truth in due season or to be the faithfull witnesse to convey the verity of things past to the present and after times be a crime unpardonable or an injustice done to the memory of the dead the Malignant generation of this age may on the same reason charge it as a fault on those holy and inspired pen-men of the sacred Scriptures which have recorded and left to after ages the wicked reignes of Kings leaving an everlasting staine and taint on their memories how prophane would it be to tax that holy man the meekest of men Moses for leaving to posterity the fratricide of Cayne the mockery of that wicked Cam what madnesse to accuse Samuel and the Authors of the Chronicles of the Kings of Iuda and Israel in leaving to after ages the Tyranny of Saul in murthering at once eighty of Gods priests that presumptuous sin and perfidious fact of David in plotting the death of Vriah that he might enjoy his Wife which lay in his bosome Rehoboams Tyrannies the Cruelties and Idolatries of Ieroboam who stands branded as the Sonne of Nebat which made Israel to sin with what face can it be imputed as an incharity to Tacitus Livy Florus and others of the Roman Historians for inserting in their histories the rape of Lucretia by that Tyrant Tarquin the Tyrannies of Tiberius and his privado Scianus those of Nero that Monster of Princes and the condemnation of him by the Senate To omit Forraign examples what offence in reason can be charged on Matthew Paris Hoâ—eden Sir Th. Moor Daniell and infinite others of our owne Historians for describing the vices and tyrannies of our owne Kings both ancient and moderne What injury have they committed in their Registers in setting downe that William the first of our Norman Kings was a known Bastard of Robert Duke of Normandy an usurper and from which spurious root all our Kings since his usurpation derive their deified titles and that most of his descendants ruled tyrannically and that amongst them all King Iohn was one of the most subtill persideous and bloody Princes that history hath afforded That Henry the third his sonne admitted by the indulgence of the Barons and People in hopes of his better Government proved as oppressive and bloody to the Nation as any of the rest That Richard the third in murthering his Brothers sonnes and usurping the Crowne was more wicked than the worst That Henry the seventh was the descendant of a Bastard sonne of Iohn of Gaunt begotten on Catherine Swinford another mans Wife though legitimated by act of Parliament yet had no other title to the Crowne but that of his Sword That six of his descendants and of our last Princes claym their rights to the Crowne from his spurious stock as if it had been in the fate of the English Nation to be perpetually chaind up to the irregular domination of a race of Kings transmitted from one bastardized roote to another That Henry the eighth was a most imperious and bloody prince the pattern and Idea of all Tyranny and one that neither spared any man in his wrath or woman in his lust That his daughter Queen Mary was the spurious issue begotten on Catherine of Austria his elder brother Arthurs Wife that Alecto superstitious and bloody Princesse That King Iames and our late King Charls were discendants from the same Stock of Henry of Richmond the one who most of all our Kings secretly cunningly and underhand indeavoured and laid the plot to undermine the freedoms of the english nation and King Charls to have followed the design with more plots wiles and stratagems than any of our former
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
being the scope and method of the whole I have thought it not impertinent in preparation thereunto here to adjoyn some thing of the place of his birth and manner of his breeding That he was born in Scotland 1600. and remained there untill the second year of his Fathers reigne needs no further attestation That on the ceasing of the sicknesse 1602. at London for its ominously remarkable that two most furious plagues immediately followed the very ingresse both of the Father and the Son to their Crowns under the stile and title of Duke of Yorke he was conveyed from Edenborough to St. James's known to many yet living That during his Infancy then fitter for the oversight of the female sex than the masculine there was such an innated incorrigible obduracy and inflexibility in his nature that his Nurses and those Gentlewomen that attended him could very rarely devise how to please him much lesse to reclaim that intemperature of his naturall constitution which as the Gentlewomen themselves have both often related and protested so are there yet enough alive which will justifie it as a known truth and of which his mother Queen Anne would often complain usually calling him her perverse and obstinate Son and his Brother Prince HENRY not without a propheticall judgement to befall the Kingdome in case on King James his Father and his own decease the Crown should descend on him God knows and I call him to witnesse that I shall not willingly present a syllable to the prejudice of his memory otherwise then for truths sake abused and the generall satisfaction of such as would be rightly informed thereof having never had any cause given me to write more or lesse than becomes me in sincerity confessing that considering the distance I stood in to be a pertaker of his secrets as having been only a poor servant of his Fathers untill weary of the Court I retired having seen enough of the vanity thereof and of both raigns though on some urgent occasions in my Addresses to him I have had the honour of his gracious aspect and sometimes good words from his own mouth never any other injury than in my particular sufferings involved in the generall calamity proceeding from the late fatall warre of which I cannot in justice excuse him whose ambition and wilfulness to rule alone and without controule of any others than hers which had too long and imperiously overruled him which the following Animadversions will more amply manifest Having thus made my Apology that neither any particular spleen or quarrell to his person hath incensed me to write as in justice I ought I come to his education as he arrived to riper years under the tutorship of Bishops and men of that Garbe known to many who they were how he was seasoned both in Learning and Religion It s most certain that he attained to some competent measure of literature for a Prince and as I have some reason to beleeve suckt in with the most of the Episcopall leven but as to the Religion wherewith afterward he was seasoned I am confident he was more beholding to his honest Secretary Mr. Murrey than to any other of his Prelaticall Tutors though he after proved at best a mere formall Protestant an enemy to the Puritan party and a friend to Bishops as proceeding from the instructions of his own Father and the influence of his Prelaticall tetinue It s a known truth that in the midst of that long fruitlesse and restlesse pursute of the old Kings for a marriage with the Infanta Secretary Murrey who had then the chiefest influence on his Counsells had privatly diswaded him from any further thought thereof as a Match which would neither be well pleasing to God acceptable to the generality of the people or propitious to the Kingdom in respect of the disparity of their religions which so much wrought upon him what by the Secretaries owne perswasions and the reading unto him of Mr. De Molins Tractate on the 17 of Deutronomy De Illegitimes Marages that he was altogether averted to marry in any papisticall family insomuch as the old King making diligent inquiry by whose infusions he was so much alienated from the Spanish Match it was at last found out to be Mr. Murreys workemanship which cost the honest man the losse of his place and expulsion the Court Howsoever the King out of his restlesse desire to match his Son in the House of Austria soone turn'd his affection and sends him in person attended with the Duke of Buckingham privately by the way of France to Madrid where after an expencefull voyage and to no other purpose but to his own dishonour and disgrace to the Prince after six moneths stay in Spain he returned to London the 5 of October following his going from hence and about 5 moneths after his arrivall the old King dyed at Theobalds and the Crown descended upon him which anon we shall see how he managed it That he had then so much applause and love of the people in generall even to a kind of veneration in the hopes that all men conceived of his future Government is known to thousands yet living and that no Prince sooner lost it is also not unknown most men wondering how so suddenly not only the affections of the people were withdrawn from him but to fall into the generall obloquy was held by the wisest a kind of Riddle not suspecting and indeed then not knowing or not observing the reasons thereof to have arisen from his then present steerage of the Helm by the only Compasse of the old Kings delineation whereof more hereafter will appear in his carriage at his first Oxford Parliament where I must give this caution to the Reader not to value that late impartiall and flattering Author Aulicus Coquinariae neither to give over much credit to King Iames his Court who in some particulars speakes much more of truth than the other babler who with no colour at all of sincerity and knowledge of those times talks at randome palpably and ridiculously rendring King Iames for the only Platonicall Politick Peaceable and pious King of his time a Prince as he would have it beleeved the Paragon for his wisdome and care the fruits whereof no rationall man could ever yet discerne when the plain truth was and the right measure of his peaceable reigne was well known to all Europe to be the onely occasion of all the after Wars throughout Germany and the root of all those of his Successors throughout his Dominions those in Germany to the utter undoing of his Son-in-Law the Count Palatyne and all those Princes which assisted him in the Cause of Bohemia whilst himself refused or durst not draw his Sword through meer fear of offending the SPANIARD in the least punctilio but sate musing at home how to improve his Soveraignty to devise projects how to raise moneyes to satiate his needy and greedy Scotch Courtiers by privy seals benevolences sale of Forrest lands asserts
woods and Crowne Lands and to pick quarrels with his Parliaments and to entaile them to his heirs Generall his successor proving no ill scholler in putting in practice his Fathers precepts and for the better invading of the libertyes of the Subjects to suppresse Parliaments which never offended him but in refusing to supply his prodigalities when himselfe had wasted treble the treasure in an idle Peace than his predecessor the Queen spent in a continued and furious War with the greatest Prince of Christendome and yet to leave him the richest King of the Westerne World which if the plain truth of the affairs of those times may without offence be made manifest were the only frutes of his so much magnified and peaceable raigne for I may in sincerity say it over and over againe and no other than a knowne truth that the not drawing of his Sword in the Count Palatines quarrell to which he was so often importuned by most of the Germaine Princes invited yea prest by his own Councell of State yet would he not but hindered in what possibly he could those that would and did to their utter undoing by his many expencefull and fruitlesse Embasseys and to the greatning of the Austrian Familie which had long befoold and baffled him even to the derision and scorne of all the Princes of Europe as to his Justice of which the Court Cook tattels the whole Kingdom can witnesse how he measured it out by suffering the rigor and uttermost penalty of the Law to fall on the accessaries in Sir Tho. Overbuties case and to take the Principalls into his mercy t is true not Somerset into his former favour yet sure we are to stop his mouth from telling of tales he gave him at once in pure gift so much of the Crowne Lands as were well worth to be sold 100000 pounds though it melted away like wax in the Sun and himselfe to dye a stark begger and in infamy and as to that his most excellent chast Lady and Virgin Bride let the ghosts of Sir Iames Stuart Sir George Wharton and Prince Henry speak and not him this is most manifest that by divine justice she was knowne to dye living and of so loathsome a disease that her own Gentlewomen have often protested it before many credible witnesses they could not indure the Chamber where she lay neither scarce the next adjacent for the horrible stinke that a long time before she expired issued from her carcase and polluted the ayre I could speak much more of the cariage of that foule businesse and of others not pertinent to this place and so can many more persons of honour yet alive which will tell the tatler to his face that which he hath either with impudence or out of ignorance published are both false and abominable adulatious both in reference to the old King Somerset and his Lady and others of that tribe Sir Walter Rawly the Archbishop Abbot and that of the records on which he would build the fabrick of his untruths were known forgeryes of their owne making and as to the Archbishops particular he comes not near the truth that honest man alone as it is well knowne withstood the King alone and the other Bishops in their base complyance in that nullity insomuch that the King took upon him to convince thê said Archbishop in a treatise dedicated to the unbelieving Thomas yet to be seene passages which as it seems the talking tatler knew not neither little of truth which he assumes to relate and howsoever he hath farc't up a Pamphlet as to the matter happily his own or not yet in good manners he might have forborne to make use of another mans phrase which in divers places of his relation it appears he hath stolen out of the Fragmenta Regalia though varied to the worse by him as much vitiated as by the printer But I now both leave him and his theaft untill I may have the happiness to hear further from him then doubtlesse I shall not faile to give him a fuller answer in the mean time I shall advise him to remember that he which justifieth the wicked and condemneth the just even they both are an abomination to the Lord a text that will become both of us to take into our serious consideration and as I have good reason to believe best of the two befits himselfe to look to who takes upon him with such palpable flattery to present King Iames for such a Saint-like Prince when as had he either knowne a peece of his life and conversation or the least of his secrets and Counsels as of those I well know him not to be guilty surely he would have been ashamed so to have written of a King who left behind so little evidence of piety true Religion temperance and care of the Subjects welfare and so much of the structure of absolute Monarchy to his successor a study to which he had wholy devoted himselfe and left it to his Sonne as an infelicious legacy and three Kingdoms destruction which were without all question the fruits and effects of his pe ceable reigne But briefly now to his only Sonne and the heire of his fathers unhappy peace and the prosecutor of his owne his posterities and the Kingdomes ruine THE REIGNE OF KING CHARLS Or the pseudo-Martyr discovered c. KING CHARLS then Prince of Wales began his unfortunate Reigne on the expiration of his Father King Iames at Theobalds the 27 of March 1627. At his very first entry to the Crowne and after the consummation of the ceremonies of his Inauguration and the reception of the Queen from France he was as his Father before him at hi accession driven away from the Metropolis of the Kingdom London by the increase and rage of the Pestilence as an ill omen both to the Father and the Sonne but of a more ominous portent to the three Kingdoms A Parliament at that time was summoned and sitting at Westminster but hastily adjourned to Oxford on the former reason of the increase of the Sicknesse and a War likewise was then in preparation and in design for Spayn as an ill presage of the after improsperity in all others which this unfortunate Prince undertook for what in this kinde was ever enterprised by him was both inauspicious and fatall losse of Honour to himselfe reputation and destruction to the English Nation During the Parliament at Oxford the King by his Speaker the Lord Keeper Williams moved the Assembly for a present supply of moneys in relation to the intended War the Parliament in reply to the Kings desires as they were to be Contributors to the War so they humbly moved to be made partakers of the design this so reasonable a motion was very ill taken yea scorned by the King for it even then evidently appeared that he meant to rule alone and at will and pleasure Hence we may observe the first distaste or rather indeed a pickt quarrel against his first Parliament which
subtill and winding spirit proud as one raised out of the dust haughty and imperious in his place and as fit an instrument for the Kings turne as possibly he could chose out of the 26. Prelates There was also about this time as before is intimated taken into the Kings favour or rather brought in by the alurement of preferment Sir Thomas Wentworth whom the King immediately created a Baron and on the decease of Weston the Treasurer Earl of Strafford a Gentleman of great parts and patrimony a Common-wealths-man he had been and one that formerly in all Parliaments as much thwarted and withstood the arbitrary power of both Kings as any one whatsoever the King having won this Gentleman to be his owne bethought himselfe that these two with some others of the same stamp would be sufficient to whom to impart his grand designs the one for Church affairs the other for the State but both suitable to the ends he had in hand the last being of as high bould and haughty a spirit as he could possibly have pickt out of all the nobility Time will shew us and our own lamentable experience may better demonstrate how the one in Church affairs the other in civill administrations behaved themselves to the after prejudice and destruction of the three Kingdoms But as we have already said in the end to their own ruine and their Masters To leave this digression we have left the King and Queen at the Court let us returne where we left them in their different devotions the truth was how little care soever there was then taken either by the King or his time-serving Prelates of Gods service and true worship otherwise than in a formality or shew of Godlinesse either in the Court or throughout the Kingdom sure we are that the Queenes superstitious worship was specially provided for and a sort of Locusts there were in addition to her own Chaplins admitted the Kingdome styled by the name of Capuchins but cunning knaves and for these a new Chappell was erected with an habitation and large maintenance allowed them even in the face of the Court and eye of the Kingdom and to please the Queen Masses and Masse Priests were frequently permitted throughout the Land not only in a tacite connivence but in an open way of tolleration and in contempt of Gods true worship We may well admit that the wayes which the King then took could not be welpleasing to him which was never yet pleased with an Idolatrous mixt and halfe-fac'd worship or that the gayety and wantonnesse of a promiscuous Court could be maintained without an excessive charge neither that a perfidious shew and offer of a warre with France in the defence of the French Protestants would in the conclusion be well thought of either from abroad or at home when the King during the treaty of the marriage with the Queen on the earnest request of the princes of the Religion had engaged himself to protect them and to raise the siedge then before the Town of Râ—chell neither that feigned preparation which the King made by sea in their assistance will in time come to light when evident it was afterwards to all the World that in stead of defending them they were not onely slaughtered at Sea by the Kings shipping but by plain Treachery both their Cause undone and their forces defeated by Land a sinne which God in his justice could not passe over unpunished yet carryed on in such a mysticall way in that attempt on the Isle of Rea to the losse of honour and blood of some of the bravest men of the Nation insomuch that the World to this very day hath been held in suspence to what Religion the King himself stood most inclyned or whether the Father or the Son which with such ardency sought the Alliance of Spaine and France or else no where Families if not incestous yet of Idolatrous and Supersticious Religions which hath left the world in another amaze and in a puzzle to find out others inclination or whether to any Religion devoted if it be rightly considered as either Prince made and continued their secret addresses to the Apostolick see and that his Holinesse in both reigns had his Agents and Nuntioes here resident reciprocally and in interchange of the Kings Agents at Rome many clandestine conferences both with the King and Queene and the state of the Protestant Religion here howsoever openly profest by both Kings reduced to the next step of conformity with Rome when as that sordid and base complyance of the Bishops and Court-Clergy which if grace more than hopes of preferment had prevailed with them might have been a Remora or stay to either King and to have told them plainly how dangerous it was to their well-being if they attempted to make Religion the stalking-horse to their irregular designs and to bethink themselves that God was not to be deluded and how unsafe it would be for them Ludere cum sanctis But these were the men who even from the beginning of both reigns had only studied the inclinations of these Princes and rather took upon them to comply and incourage them than to have withstood either of them in the least of their many irregularities loosness in Religion such was the basenesse of these fawning Sycophants that the common theams of the Court Pulpits throughout both reigns were purposely pickt out where on to draw conclusions and doctrines of arbitrary power which was the usuall ladder most of them clim'd to preferment whence also we may observe Gods judgments both to have been shortly after powred out on the persons themselves and their functions in their extirpation and totall irradication of them without hopes of their restauration Hitherto we have deduced the History of this unfortunate Prince to the 3d. year of his Reign we shall now runne over the rest with as much brevity as the nature of the subject will permit The King at this time was in his wonted condition of want as his Father before him ever was so would he be in the same predicament Two millions of annuall Treasure or very neer could not serve their turns neither would it content them though in Scotl. 50000 l. per annum was more than ever King James could possibly raise without the assistance of the Estates assembled We may see the difference and what oprations change of Clymates can worke upon the nature of Princes comming out of poor Kingdomes into richer and with what Conscience they could dispence the care of their own souls to become as spunges to suck up the fruits of the poor passive people of England gained out of the labour of their hands and sweat of their browes when they had enough and more than ever any of the Kings of England did raise and in retribution of their love and loyalty towards them as by divers manifestations may be made appeare with how many slights and wyles with how much care trouble and vexation of spirit
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
Pattents incircuited and extended to Salt Butter Sope Leather Wine Sugar Allum Sea-coale Malt Cards and Dice and what not In order to these that notable project of shipmoney a device of Finches invention and shaped for the nonce suitable to the Kings designs it extenden to such a latitude as that by this one illegall power he might rayse moneys in what proportion he would where and when he pleased without Parliaments and so was it stated by the terrour which that fluttering bird Finch imprest on the Iudges to declare it legall by their extrajudiciall sentences though for their honour be it spoken three of them as Crook Hutton and Denham withstood it as a most illegall and unheard-of taxation against and destructive to the fundamentall Lawes of the Land and Liberties of the People We shall now passe it over though it was an invention which of it selfe would require a story not unworthy to be left to posterity how ever as long as it was on foot the King made use of it to the purpose and in two if not three yeares whilest it was put in practice raised not so little at 1000000 of poundes It is without question that what by monopolies the inhancing of the Customes and Rate Books Knighthood money and projects of this nature as the Fines in the Star-Chamber High Commission and depopulations with the sale of the Crowne Lands besides Subsidies and the Royall standing Revenue with divers other incomes most oppressive to the people the King within the space of ten or twelve years raised more Treasure than any two of his Predecessors in fourty years and yet none of our Kings had lesse occasion and this King more wanting as having for twelve years together no warres considerable neither any in expectation more than such as wilfully and most unjustly he undertook about the 15th year of his reign against the Scots and that to no other end but to advance his grand designe of invassalating the 3. Kingdomes as hereafter more evidently may be made to appear The King having thus far waded into the depth of his arbitrary strains to the great regret of the people and having for ten or twelve years together laid aside all thoughts of making use of Parliament which might controule so many of his illegall and irregular exactions in farther advance of his grand designe both to rule and raise money at will and pleasure having by so long a tract of time taught the people to forget Parliaments or not to hope for them and as he conceived well to have forwarded his greater work by the experience he had made of the passivenesse both of his English and Irish Subjects by the activity of his chief Instruments Strafford Canterbury and Cottington which principally then carried on the design in either Kingdom both in the Church and State which by time and degrees had so amated the spirits of the people as they seemed patiently to bear though unwillingly and not without some publike murmuration what loads might in the future be laid upon them but evermore in the midst of their resentments to cast the odium of their oppressions rather on the Kings ministers than on himself with the retention of a reverent esteem towards him as the least author of their sufferings when as himself alone was principall which invited him with the more boldnesse and lesse fear to the perfecting and speedy accomplishment of his mayn designe We may in the way of our relation avouch it and that for truth that both the Father and the Sonne were the most carelesse Courtiers of their people of any of our Kings and as regardlesse of the love and reverent esteem the universall Nation carried towards them an inexcusable error and shewes out unto us what in probability were and would be the issues of their Ingratitude We all know that popularity in private persons and the applause of the people are the ingredients of suspition and an errour which al wise and cunning Statists shun and avoid as tending to obscure the worth and dignity of their Master but in Princes it is a Vertue that most of all other their deportments takes most and soonest in the peoples affections we may boldly say it that neither of these two Princes were ever guilty of that attractive Vertue onely it hath beene since observed that at his comming out of Scotl. 1641. he was very prodigall in putting off his hat as he past the streets But omitting Paraphrases we have but even now said it that as to the Queens side in Court it was excessively profuse the Kings more moderate yet not so frugall but that there were a sort about his person to whom he participated his secrets and committed the managery of his arbitrary worke which did sufficiently lick their fingers We shall omit the Duke for he died within two years of the Kings accesse Digby and Cottington which in the former reign had laid the foundations of their after greatnesse but they which in this reign and in the midst of the Kings necessities spent lavishly lived at high rates and amassed most were VVeston the Treasurer Manchester Strafford Goring and the Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber neither did the farmers of the Customs go away empty handed yet we may see that as all or most of these had a time of getting and filching from the Crown so likewise did their Master in the end administer a sad occasion to rid most of them of their ill-gotten gains Having thus brought the King to the 15th year of his most unhappy reign and shewed out by what means wayes and instruments he raised monyes to supply his necessities and prodigallities of the Court what hitherto he acted was in calme and peaceable times though not without murmuration We shall anoncome to the hostile that fatall and sanguinary part of his unfortunate reigne He had hitherto led on his designe in a fore-game yet still in his wonted way of want the Queen-mother arriving holp on his expences Strafford the Archbishop and Cotington as the Kings prime agents had fitted all necessaries in a readinesse both the English and Irish patient in what formerly they had suffered and ready to be ridden and spur'd to the quick the mode of the French Goverment being stil in the eye of the Kings design as left unto him by his Fathers legacy and now again revived and quickned by the Queen Mothers instigation a Lady fatall to all places wheresoever she resided Strafford having raised in Ireland an Army of Papists to helpe on and at a deah lift and about this time there were divers Commissions issued out to certain Lords and Gentlemen with power to impose new and unheard of Imposts on all the commodities of the Land and in addition to these Commissions were granted to the Earl of Arundell to take the military charge of the Northern parts into his hands another to the Earle of Worcester to raise an army of Papists in Wales as it is well known to master
the West marches to assist the Irish Army landing at Milford as need should require and the President my Lord of Bridgewater commanded to wave that place for his Majesties speciall service a person as it seems that was too honest to be wrought upon At the same time his Lordship Cottington was likewise made Lord Warden of the Tower with authority to take in Souldiers and to fortifie that piece which accordingly was put in execution and the White-Tower planted with many great Ordnance with their mouths forced against the City to the great amazement of the Citizens and the whole Kingdom What the King meant or intended by these irregular and prodigious acts of his let the most willfull Malignant make his own judgement when as the whole Kingdom was never in a greater calme of peace loyalty and quietnesse or in any appearance of insurrection The Excise at that instant was likewise in agitation and the very same house wherein now that office is erected in Broadstreet taken by Cottington to the same purpose and Strafford much a-about that time dispatcht into Ireland there to call a Parliament for assistance in relation to the intended Scotch War where he musters a new the Irish army gets four Subsidies presently returns for Engl. where a Parl. for the same end was likewise summoned not any thing now stood as Remora in the way of the Kings great designe but those refractory Scots this was the block that in the first place must be removed to begin this work of darknesse first fomented by the Bishops especially Canterbury here and that pragmattick Prelat of Scotland Maxwell with Hamilton and Traquair on the by These two assisted by Strafford had the whole managery of that affair We must not too much insist on every particular this Scotch work alone requiring a volume to derive it from its first fountain and originall as a project of the old Kings to introduce the Episcopal power and Church Government there conformable to that of England and to suppresse or master that of the Kirk Presbyterian power as the only obstruction to absolute Soveraignty Gods providence and his wayes are insearchable and the carriage of this work of darknesse is very remarkeable it hath left the world in a maze how the Kings designs by this Scotch enterprize should turne and overthrow the whole frame and fabrick of all his former projections and of so faire a fore-game so to bring it about as on the very nick of the accomplishment to lose both it his reputation and life and at a time when all wise men had given the freedoms of the English nation utterly lost and meerly by the wilfulnesse of his own irregular motions more beloved reverenced and obeyed than any of his Predecessors The state of the three Kingdomes as abovesaid but a little before this Scotch enterprise as to a any Warre from abroad mutinies and insurrections at home was well known to be in as great a calme of Peace and quietnesse as in any reign since the Conquest the subject passive loyall and obedient to the Kings will and pleasure himfelf at peace and amity with all his Allyes Confederates and Neighbour-Princes nothing could be Imagined to have troubled him but his own ambition and those restlesse appetites of his which would not suffer him to enjoy content in the mid'st of prosperity and to rest satisfied in the fruition of more abundance than ever any King of England attain'd unto In this requiem could he have seen it was his soule restlesse and as we may of truth say by no instigation more troubled than by hers which had the honour of his Bed an unhappy unquietnesse which his principall privadoes rather added fewell to the fire thereof than water to quench it they had studied his inclination which was the rule they walkt by not how to apply wholsome medicines to cure the raging malady of his ambition which by none was more cherish'd than by the Bishops and his formal clergy in the way wherein his will and lust had predominance over his reason such as had not only taken the same fiery infection but as much laboured therein as himself whose sunction and office if grace had guided them it properly was rather to have applyed antidotes than venome to their Masters disease and to have told him plainly where the fault lay But to returne to the relation of this Scotch enterprise the King as before is intimated through meer necessity was induced to call a Parliament not to reforme abuses crept into the Common-wealth better it may be said violently introduced through his ill Government and discontinuance of Parliaments the ancient remedies of publick grievances but to supply his own wants in reference to the war intended the Kings wants being more pressing than ever the servants of his own side in Court a good space before debard of their Wages purposely to scrape up moneys towards this needlesse Warre the Queens Servants on the other side were notwithstanding exactly paid It would be superfluous and impertinent to describe the whole story of this designe so obvious and generally knowne to all the Kingdom how first this affair was carryed on by sending a new Litturgy to EDINBVRGH as an experiment how the Scots would swallow the first bayt to their inthraldome how there the Litturgy was resented and with what after disgusts it was not only refused but detested How that Traquire and Hamilton one after the other were Commissioned with power instructions to inforce their conformity what Flames Invectives and Comments flew here abroad of the Bishops penning of their Rebellion how againe the Scots stood upon their punctillioes in defence of themselves and their Covenant against this innovation how many Petitions and Messages past between them and the King how at last on dispute between their Commissioners and his Majesties at their first Treaty in the North and the aversnesse of the Kings souldiers to imbrace the quarrel the King granted them his royall Pascification and sent them home well satisfied how againe on his Majesties returne his act of Pascification was here in Court resented by the Queen and the Bishops and with what Language the King was affronted to have brought home a dishonourable Peace and obstructive to his own designes how then this needlesse and willfull quarrell was revived and the Kings Pacification vilified and burnt by the hands of the common Hangman and the King easily brought on anew to muster a second Army to subdue those stubborn and rebellious Scots as generally then especially by the Bishops they were stiled when as by the Free-quarter of his first Army most parts of the County of York were beggered and the Soldiery unpaid how the Parliament and generally the people abhor'd this war and refused to contribute towards it how thereupon quinto Maij 1649. it was suddenly dissolved how on the very same day the Cabinet Councell sate in close consultation at White-Hall how to raise moneys to defray
the charge of this second war how that Paper the results of that Councell after stiled The Juncto came to be preserved by the means of Sir Henry Vane the younger and Mr. Pym who imparted it the ensuing Parliament as the star which guided them to know the authors and projectors of this other wilfull designes what preparations the Scots made to defend themselves and how with a puissant Army they first entred the Kingdom under the Command of Lesley who made his way by force with some losse of blood on both sides at Newburn and after that marched peaceably to Newcastle which he fortifyed and from thence sent a Petition in the name of the whole Nation to the King that their cause might be heard before more bloud should be drawn which before was utterly denied them with contemptuous acerbity The particulars whereof shall God willing in all sincerity be anon amply declared together with such discoveries as are not yet publikely known and so particularly manifested in many points as in the following Reply and Animadversions may appear both for the generall satisfaction and such Royalists to whom I have heartily addrest them as well for their own conversion as also in vindication and farther manifestation of Truth and to the everlasting honour of this Parliament whom God hath visibly enabled with courage both to foresee and withstand the violences of a Prince who in all his Expresses Protestations and overtures for Peace and Accommodation with the Parliament were inseparably accompanyed with dissemblings fraud wiles and reservations may be further manifested by the evident proofs of his Letters under his own hand writing his Commissions Missives and many other authentick Testimonies though many of them noted and long since exposed and set out to the world and answered in the Parliaments Declarations especially manifested in that of No more Addresses yet not so vulgarly seen as they may be on a more exact veiw and a diligent perusall and comparing the Kings publick expresses with his private practises as may apparently be seen by any that wil but take the pains either to read them in his own Character or mine Whence ariseth the great wonder of the times how and with what face either the King himselfe living should with such boldnesse stand on his justification or that any since his death indued with common sense and reason can have the Impudence to defend him dead who living so willfully fraudulently and obstinately persevered in pursuance of his own lustfull and pernitious designes in invassalating the poor people which untill himselfe gave and prosecuted the occasion of their falling from him and were inforced to withstand his violent courses was more beloved honoured and obeyed than any of our Kings A Prince that raised and wasted more Treasure wilfully spilt more Innocent blood devasted more the lands and habitations of his Subjects ruined more families and more imbroyled three flourishing Kingdoms than all of his Progenitors and yet for all these his prodigious cruelties and misdemeanors to be inshrin'd dead for a martyr both alive and dead adored for a Saint We shal now close up the first part of our Breviary as it relates to his reign designs before he erected his Standard the manner managery of the hostile part of his life though both long since sufficiently known and felt by many thousands of the poor innocent people of three Kingdomes yet for avoiding of repetitions and some other motives I have taken the leave to insert a short description thereof in the subsequent reply leaving out the manner of his arraignment by his Judges all of them to be adjudg'd a new at the great Tribnnall of the King of Kings whether the one as his Vice-gerent hath ruled and judged the people committed to his protection for their defence and hath dealt uprightly with them or not and whether the others as ordained by divine providence to do justice on him for his cruelties have condemned this King for his Tyranny and unrighteous dealing with three nations to whose justice in feare and trembling we must all submit Where we may with good reason make this Quaere Whether the cutting off of our bloody and blood-thirsty Prince together with the exclusion of his whole posterity can be a sufficient expiation in the eye of heaven for the blood of a million of poor innocent soules slaughtered for the satiating of one Princes lustfull will and pleasure since he that repents not hath said it that the Land shall not be clensed until the blood of one murtherer be shed this we may say and safely believe that Almighty God for the sins of the Nations in his wrath and just indignation sent this most unhappy King as his rod of judgement to reign over us and in his justice hath likewise burnt it and brought that fatall end upon him and his Fathers house according to his owne and often Imprecations We shall conclude this first scene of our Narrative with the Kingdoms fate Iratus Deus dedit ijs Regem The Authors reply to an invective Remonstrance against the Parliament and present Government wherein the whole managery of the late War is exactly described SIR HAving diligently perused the replication you sent me I perceive that you are no changeling but one and the self same man in your opinion both in justifying the late Kings Actions and in aspersing the Parliament with raysing the late War against him as a premeditated Plot long since hatch't by a factious party amongst them and to change the Government and pull up Monarchy and Episcopacy by the roots Strange Chimaeras indeed that dropt lately out of the Clouds and Vapours of your own and your parties gyddy-braines neither doe you rest there but you proceed to charge those which now sit at Westminster with many other fowle Calumnies to all which in their proper place I shall not faile to give you a particular answer though I could have wisht that you had fixt your cogitations on some other subject suitable to truth and the ingenuity you pretend unto and not after ten years revolution of time to fall flat on a meer suggestion of your owne without any other proof than a bare allegatiou and that so destitute of possibility either of thought or intent in the Parliament to effect as that the affirmation seems to me a meer malicious fiction of your own rather than a simple verity and so unbecoming a Gentleman of your quality as that in plainnesse I take the boldnesse to tell you you might on better reason with Copernicus his Disciples have aver'd another world to be in the Moon thâ—n to have devised and broached so vaine and senselesse an untruth But since t is more of your will than chance to fall on so groundlesse a fable and on a theam so old and over-worne might I have advised you should have turn'd your tone which would have been much more for your honour and aver'd that the King even from the very first
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
the subject adulterate the true Protestant Religion with the superstitious mixture of Popery as it manifestly appeared by his admittance of a Jesuiticall crew into his own Court Cappuchins at Somerset-house with large maintenance even in the face of the Court and eye of the Kingdom with a generall connivence amounting to a tacite toleration to all Papists together with idolatrous Masses both in his own house permitted andused throughout the Kingdom in most Papists houses without controule in imitation of Solomon after that by his Wives he was turn'd Idolater to set up the abomination of Ashteroth even in the face of Jerusalem And as to his invading of the Libertyes of the people with his many other oppressions and irregularities we all know and have good cause to remember them The Breviary of his Life and unfortunate Reigne manifestly declares as to his intent of suppressing of Parliaments and future oppression of the people the observations I intend to send you with his own Letters sufficiently demonstrates by whose motion and Counsels those exorbitances were first by his own Fathers Instructions pursued found in his Cabinet at Theobalds immediately after his departure and whereof one was to quit himself by degrees of all Parliaments as too bold Co-partners in the Government with their Kings to run the future course of his government answerable to that of France and to verifie this I shall point you to King James his own Speech in open Parliament 1609. March 21. Where you may see what preparations he had provided for his Successor to rule by parallelling himself with God who he saith Hath power to create or destroy make or un make at his pleasure to give life or send death to judge all and to be judged or to be accomptable to none to raise low things and to make high things low at pleasure and to God are both Soul and Body due the like power saith this King have Kings they make and unmake their Subjects they have power of raising and casting down of life and death Iudges over all their Subjects and in all causes and yet accomptable to none but God alone they have power to exalt low things and abase high things and to make of their Subjects like men at Chess a pawn to take a Bishop or a Knight and to cry up and down their Subjects as they doe their money Whence you may observe this Kings Principles which in the Speech it selfe every where extant you may find that even this King whom the world stiled the Platonicall King and was reputed a pious Prince took the hint of his tyrannicall principles from a Bishop who in the very face and audience of a Court of Parliament preacht all these fine arbitrary doctrines and yet in the Speech it self fol. quarto you shall find the King defends him Hence you way perceive by whose counsells the late King steered all the course of his government after his accession to the Crown with the reason of his seldome calling of Parliaments and his often dissolving of such as he did call without their due effects I shall now faithfully relate the whole progresse of the War and by what female advice he was directed to the reducing of all the three Kingdomes under his absolute power and for your better satisfaction shall by the way present you with the orignall cause of his hatred against this Parl. and by what strange means it was summoned and at a time when all wise men had given all Parliaments for lost which although long since and by many more able pens than mine have been sufficiently manifested to the world yet for your sake I shall adventure to present them a new as having little more in addition to the elabourate pains of others than in some particulars which I find not as yet produced to the light of the world Briefly then It is a knowne truth that the King in that his unnecessary raising of a warre against the SCOTS and through the prodigality of the Court especially the petulancy and lavishnesse of the Queens side had so exceedingly exhausted both his Exchequer and Credit and reduced himself to that extreme Indigence that he knew not whither to turn himself neither as in the Breviary of his Reigne is exactly laid down could that great head-piece the grand Master for carrying on of all his Arbitrary work shew him how to dis-intangle himselfe out of that harle wherein his owne wilfull Inclinations had incumbred him We all know that the King on the entrance of the Scots at Newborne in August 1640. took a posting journey Northward to his Army Strafford being Commissioned Generall in the room of the Earl of Northumberland whither they were no sooner arrived but they found the Souldiery in little better than mutiny for want of their pay the whole army then lying on Free-quarter on the County of York and the King without so much money as would pay halfe a Regiment the Scots possest of the Town of Newcastle the Nobility having been exhausted in their attendance the Summer before yet to shew their loyalty they again repair to York amongst the rest the Earls of Hartford and Essex in their journey take an occasion by the way to addresse themselves to the Queen to whom they declare the sad condition wherein both the King and Kingdome were then reduced and that they saw no possible means other then a Parliament whereby to repair the State relieve the King and peece up the rents and breaches between both Nations on this expostulation they prevailed with the Queen to write her Letters to his Majesty to move him to condescend to the summons of this Parliament the mention whereof they very well knew without such a mediatrix would be very displeasing unto him these Lords being thus provided with her Majesties Letters repair to Yorke and presented them to the King and upon consultation with the rest of the Lords then attending his Majesty five and twenty of them joyn in a Petition to that purpose The Scots likewise and 200 Gentlemen of the County of York concurring in the same sute for a present summons of a Parliament Thus was his Majesty as I may say beleaguered on all hands not anyone but Strafford dissenting in the end what between the Kings urgent necessities and a concurrency of Petitions together with the Queens Letters which weigh'd most with the King was this Parliament contrary to the expectation of all men produced to the admiration of the Kingdom though against the Kings expresse vow taken at the putting off his robes as before is mentioned when he dissolved his second Parliament and in a contemptuous deportment threw them from him protesting that it should be the last time of their putting off or on Hence we may discern through what difficulties and streights this Parliament took it's beginning we may well say by Gods speciall providence and by hers principally as the instrumentall cause thereof which
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
of his Progenitors as it is well known to many of his own party who were of that Committee touching the improving of an annuall revenue to be setled upon him by act of Parliament out of one particular the Customes amounting to 400000 li. per annum proposed by old Mr. Turner the Farmer of the Allom works and the same so much forwarded that it was committed by Votes of the Parliament to a select number of Members to be considered and shortly after was stated to a proportion of 200000 l. more per annum than ever he received out of the great and petty farms but that the world may know the wilfulnesse of this King after that he was gon from the Parliament and had erected his Standard at Nottingham he sent word by Master Levison by name and one of his Bedchamber to Turner That if ever he medled with the Parliament about that businesse thenceforth not to look him in the face whence it evidently appears that he meant not to take any thing of the Parliament by way of gift having it in design to take what he pleased as power should inable him God knowes I send you no Fables but shall willingly be accomptable of any thing which you shall find herein inserted if it suit not with the naked truth and sincerity of him who would not that your self and so many of the English Nation should be any longer deluded and flamm'd with untruthes and nurst up in a belief of want of the Parliaments good and loyall intentions towards him untill he had wilfully and desperately made himself uncapable of the love and loyalty of his people and such was the ingratitude of this unhappy King for proofe whereof amongst many instances that I could present and of his carelesse paying where he borrowed and ruining of many of his servants let this one suffice of Mr. Turner tow hom he owed no small sums promised much and often as he did to many others but performed nothing when it was the least thought of his heart the after-story as a known truth will both shew forth his ingratitude and the extremity of his want with those sordid shifts he was put unto both at the sitting down of this Parliament and long before when the poor old man petitioned him for the nomination of a Baron which is most true that the King granted him without scrupie provided he named a Gent. of worth in short it was my Lord Capel and he was to give him in ready money 10000 l. but the King sending for the old man told him of his want and that he would gratifie him otherwise with double that sum so the King as it is well known flattered the good old man out of his money which was presently given to the Queen Mother for her Transportation hence into Germany and the old Gentleman left to seek his bread and to die a very poor man many instances of this kinde I could relate but to returne to our relation the Parliament then moved the City for the loan of so much present money as might serve to discharge the arrears due to both Armies which the Citizens denyed unless an act might passe for the Parliaments sitting during pleasure the Citizens well remembring the Kings wonted and sudden dissolving of all the Parliaments of his Reigne The King then finding where the Remora lay readily past that bill in relation to his own debt which hath been since both by himselfe and his party so much magnified for an Act of Grace surpassing all of his Progenitors and shortly thereupon takes his journey towards Scotland which considering his own hidden designes was chosen in so fit a conjuncture of time as that he overtooke the Scotch Army in their march before they past the borders where what overtures he made to the Commanders to joyn with him against the Parliament best appears by the notice thereof given and sent by them to the Parliament and their own Commissioners here then residing The King then finding that neither the English or Scotch Armies would be wrought upon answerable to his designes posts to Edinburgh where he very well understood that to keep the Scots quiet necessarily he should be compell'd to give that Parliament all the content they desired as t is maifestly known he did in all things they demanded and in many Acts of Grace which to the English Parliament he utterly denyed and stood upon even to the last as the Militia the choice of their Admirall Chancellour Judges c. During the Kings abode in Scotland which was near upon foure moneths it is well known the Irish Rebellion brake forth in October 1641. and that rising authorised under the great Seale of Scotland as both the Rebels themselves aver'd and that attested by divers witnesses of credit which had seene it under Seal the Parliament here at that time had a recesse only so many of the Members as might keep up the reputation of a Parliament resided at Westminster the rest were retired unto their habitations untill November following when by order of the Houses they were all to re-assemble in the mean time whilest most of the Lords and Commons were in the Country hapned that Rebellion the Parliament by this time and at their coming together had to their old a new worke cut out to their hands what the King could not accomplish either in England or Scotland by the way of insurrections and disturbances in both those Kingdomes he had fore-laid the way to do it in Ireland howsoever grosly palliated and denyed in his Pourtracture yet so suspicious of fowle play as that on a right understanding of the mannagery of the peace and the slye carrying on of the whole businesse between himselfe and the Marquesse of Ormond to be seen in his own Letters makes it plain that he had a perfidious hand therein Now as to his preparations from France and Holland wherewith to Invade the Parliament its manifest he had then in readinesse a very considerable proportion of all sorts of ammunition and many men at least in expectation to be sent him at a call About the beginning of December following the King having as he conceived made sure worke with the Scots comes to London where at his first comming to the House he makes open profession what content he had given to his Scotch Parliament even to a kind of ostentation and as to this Parliament some dislikes he was pleased to take against them for that in his absence they had no better forwarded their worke and as to his reception in the City it was magnificent and as it seemed very well pleasing to himselfe sure it was to the people and all the spectators which suspected nothing of his ill meaning towards the Parliament The King by this time having been at home much about 20 dayes had a new and another kind of game to play than that of meriment he found that the Parliament was then much distracted as good reason they
had with the apprehension of the Irish insurrection and that horrible slaughter there committed on the poor English Protestants and that they stood not a little in jelousie and affrighted at their assiduall intell igence received from beyond sea of the Kings preparations and that his heart was not right towards them but of this he had determined to put them soon out of doubt and the more to confuse them conceiving that the Citizens would on all occasions be wholly for him having in his approach to the City in his returne from Scotland and his entry into the Suburbs and throughout all the City courteously saluted the people by the often puting off his Hat as before is intimated a favour which till then neither himselfe or his Father before him had never bestowed upon the vulgar when as it after appeared his designe was to make use of them having in readinesse and shortly after fild whitehall with the forlorn Officers of his Casheered Army he takes an occasion under pretence of suspicion of Treason to send for Sir Arthur Hasterigge Mr ' Hollis Mr. Pym Mr. Stroude and Mr. Hamden of the Commons House and my Lord Kimboulion of the Lords House by one of his Serjeants at Arms which being denyed him by the House as a plain breach of their privileges The very next day being the fourth of January he comes attended with his guards and those armed Cavaleers and entred into the House of Commons sits downe in the Speakers Chaire and demands the foresaid six Members which upon private intelligence given them of the Kings intent had absented themselves the King missing his prey grew exceedingly into choller and vow'd that he would have them wheresoever they were his own comportment and the demeanour of the Cavallers both in desperate words and big looks was so terrible to the Parliament that they forsook the House and sate in the City sending out a Declaration of the high breach of their Privileges together with a Petition to his Majesty that he would be pleased to grant them a guard for the security of their persons and sitting which true it is it was granted them but with such a person for the command as that they durst not accept of him but were compelled to remaine for their safety a longer space in the City untill the Lord Major and the Citizens readily assisted them and for their better security brought them in Coaches strongly guarded to Westminster whither also resorted a considerable party dayly passing along by Whitehall Gates to their rescue in case the Cavaleers should have againe disturbed their consultations on this party the Cavaleers falls a beating them whereof some they kill'd even at the Court gate untill a greater number came to their assistance The King finding himself then deceived in his expectation and that the people were generally devoted to the Parliament he makes severall visits into the City where in a publike audience be partly complains of the affronts done to him by the Parliament in their detaining the six Members and partly excusing his unadvisednesse in his entring the house in that manner as he did which is evident by his own Declaration but finding at last that his hopes failed him to have any assistance out of the City against the Parliament he stood some time in doubt what course to take but in the end resolves under the specious pretexts of his Insafety by reason of the Tumults as since himself stiles them not to stay at Whitehall any longer thereupon he departs from his own Court and the Parliament as more fully hereafter I shall take occasion to remember Hitherto I have presented you with nothing but that which is obvious and long since knowne to all the Kingdome having as briefly as I could deduced the story from the third of November 1640. which was the very day that the Parliament sate down to January 1641 neer about the latter end whereof the King removed from Whitehall to Hampton-Court Windsor and Theobalds accompanyed with his wonted guard of Ruffians the Parliament continuing still to petition him for his returne and concurrence with them but no perswasions or arguments would prevail but on he goes Northward and makes his residence at York whither he draws by degrees many of the Lords and Commons from the Parliament most of the Delinquent party resorting unto him together with my Lord Digby from beyond sea though with his own approbation long before proclaimed Traytor thither also notwithstanding the severall affronts done to the Parliaments Messages and Messengers they ceased not to importune his return but nothing could move him against his will and inclinations for now he had another game to play having hitherto failed in all his practises and as he conceived his designes then grown to maturity his next plot was to seize on the Town of Hull by the Earle of Newcastle where a very great Magazine of Arms and Ammunition had been deposited the Summer before which the King had also refused to return to the Tower and the Towne of Newcastle by Colonell Legge was likewise to be seized on both maritime towns and of great importance for the letting in of all strangers to his assistance whereof the Parliament having certain intelligence and by all the Kings former courses being more fully assured from abroad apprehending the dangerous consequence therof thought then it more than high time in what possibly they could for the safety of themselves and the Kingdom to prevent the mischiefs which they then evidently perceived threatned the universall Nation and thereupon they suddenly dispatched the two Hothams with Commission to pre-possesse the Town by the Trained Bands of those parts here you may see the first armes that ever the Parliament appeared in unlesse you shall urge the guards which the City sent them for securing their persons from the fury of the Cavaliers which admit it was onely defensive to preserve themselves and the Kingdome in what possibly they might and in prevention of future storms which they inevitably saw were sure to fall upon them from abroad and had they not gone farther in seizing on the Navy the Tower Forts Castles and Ammunition together with the Crown Revenues which are the Nerves and strengths of the Kingdome which had they neglected no man can make doubt but they would have been perverted from their proper use and turned against the Kingdom surely then when they perceived that nothing would worke upon the Kings obstinacy but that he was resolved to make Warre and to embroyle the whole Kingdom and let in strangers they would have been deemed unworthy of the places they held in the behalf of their Countreys had they not done as they did But as to the Kings part please you to look over all the progresse of his designes and take them once more into your second consideration and you cannot in any reason beleeve but that from the very first commitment of the Earl of Strafford to the lower whose escape
he had privatly plotted and to send him into Ireland as in part is before noted but that he intended to force the Parliament to his will or utterly to annihillate it especially when he found that the Earl was condemned and his execution prest as a publick example to dye after which its most certain he meditated nothing more than war and to be revenged on the Parliament as it evidently appears by his sending over the Queen into Holland to buy arms Cockram into Denmarke and Digby in the same errand as also by his practising of the Army in the North to fall upon the Parliament together with the flight of Percy Jermin and Suckling as the onely persons first engaged in that Plot which durst not stand to the Test and in order to these his peremptory denyall to disband the Irish Army and his private addresses to other forreign Princes and States to supply him with men money and arms all which his practises were visibly known to the Kingdom to have been in agitation some of them before the Earle of Straffords execution other shortly thereupon which evidently shews that he was resolved at any rate and by force of arms to suppresse the Parliament In the universal disturbance of the whole Kingdome you may further observe how in pursuance of his mischievous designes notwithstanding the dislike the Parliament had of his determination to goe into Scotland and their humble motions to him to lay that journey aside or at least for some time to retard it as before is laid down yet would he needs goe and the reasons thereof are perspicuous considered as he made choise of his time to overtake the Scotch Army before they came to the borders and to attempt to corrupt the Commanders to turn to him and if that failed yet to give his Scotch Parliament all the content they would desire take the design farther What worke was made there concerning the Irish Rebellion what after his return home he made here in his assaulting the House in a warlike posture and his accusing the six Members as the most noted Common-wealths-men in terrour to the rest upon no other ground but on a vaine surmise of his own making of suspition of Treason where the proof is so plain by the first shedding of bloud at his own dores and the hostile manner of his entring the House attended with 300 armed men and most of them of desperate and forlorn Fortunes that the very bare deniall that the King made not the first Ware doth surpasse even impudence it self I am not ignorant that the Kings many protestations and not a few of them fortified with imprecations hath taken a firme footing in the belief of many half-witted men that his Cause was much better than it was but the wiser sort make their judgements of men by their actions not by their professions and they believe by the testimony of their sences what they see and feele they are bound to believe especially when a King in his private inditements which are the dictates of the Soule those addrest to a person which had gained an absolute power over the faculties of his reason and understanding such unbeleevers are not fit for humane society But omitting repetitions and further Comments wee have left the King at Yorke where for your better satisfaction it is fit that I put you in remembrance how there hee pursued the War in raising the people and inviting the Counties both farre and near to rise and side with him against the Parliament which in the Observations I shall send you will be made more manifest But that it may more fully appear upon what further grounds the King forsooke his owne house and the Parliament besides the pretended fear of Tumults of his own causing it was suggested unto him and he was made to believe That without his presence and concurrence with the Parliament they could not neither durst they vote or act any thing though never so relative to the safety of themselves and the Kingdome so that its apparent that either by fraud or force he was resolved to put an end to this Parliament and for farther proof of this I refer you to the Observations Now as to the main of your accusations the taking away of the Kings life and dis-inheriting of his Posterity I crave leave to defer this point to the last and to the conclusion of my animadversions where hapyily you will find the true reasons thereof and shall now proceed to the Change of the Government which you charge on the Parliament to be so long since plotted and as a power usurped and exercised by them in a dispotical way way of Tyranny in raising of money imposing of taxes and intollerable contributions on the whole Nation to take them apart I shall begin with the change of the Government as it is now established in the nature of a Republick which you know to be gotten by the Sword and likely so it is to hold by the same weapon as the Romans Saxons Danes and Normans got their Dominions here by Conquest and as the late King on that mere foundation intended to make his power absolute and A la Francoys in the needlesse endeavour wherof and to be more than stood with the constitution of the English Soveraignty you know how he lost all together with his life if your conscience cannot brook the present government as now it is established I see no other remedy left you but to quit the place you now live in and quietly if you would it suffiseth my Conscience that I live under it in the enjoyment of somewhat wherewith to subsist which I am sure was more than my self and many thousands more could do when and weresoever the late Kings armies were prevalent as to the Taxes and Contributions whereat you so much repine as insufferable and most illegally imposed on the people all that I shall say to it is that we which suffer them may all of us thank your party for it as inforced on the States by your only means for the defence of the common freedome of the Nation which as in the beginning of the late Warres your party under the royall Commissions invaded so you continually indeavour to subvert them by all the secret plots and practices you possibly can invent whereas could that malicious tumor of yours and that unquietnesse of your spirits by allayed and your selves perswaded by reason before it invades you the taxes you may be sure on 't would soon be abated why then can you not rest content with that change and government which were you not hood-winkt you might manifestly see Gods high and over-ruling providence to have carried on the worke both in a series of the many and miraculous victories of the Parliaments as also in disappointing all the late Kings designs and in discovering all your plots and practises even from the very beginning of the warre to the present which although they weigh not with you as
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
the same straine utterly denying and protesting that he had not then any manner of intent thereby to wage war with his Parliament as hereafter you shall more plainly see a strange delusion to flatter himself in dancing unseen in a net and that that he should not onely be able to deceive the People by his Protestations but to delude and cosen a Court of Parliament out of their understanding as you may see this verified in his owne Expresses sent to the Parliament from Nottingham and what a strange trick would he have put on the Parliament when from Yorke he sent them a Message that he had taken a resolution to go in person into Ireland to chastise those Rebels and to that purpose had determined to raise 2000 Foot and 200 Horse in and about the County of Chester for a guard to his person and to flatter himself with such a senseless device to delude the Parliament as if they understood him no better than to beleeve his designe to be reall when they perceived his drift was First to raise here a considerable force then to joyn with the Irish Army there and in the end to turn all his power on the Parliament It would be too wearisome to me to recount all the perfidious practices of this most unhappy Prince and too tedious to your selfe to read them I shall therefore for the present conclude and referre you to the animadversions and observations on the contrarity between his publick protestations and private Letters which you shall God willing receive very shortly and wherein I doubt not but that you will find so much fraud deceit and dissimulation of this King as will amaze you and turn the strong tyde of your belief hitherto poysoned with flams and such subterfuges as may shame any rationall man to be so long cosened and deluded by them No more Sir at present but that I desire and wish you to beleeve no otherwise of that which I have sent you than in your judgement you shall find suitable to truth and that as you shall see just cause to esteeme me as I am your well wishing friend Animadversions or Observations on the strange contrariety between the late Kings Declarations Missives Protestations Imprecations sent at severall times to the Parliament and his Pourtraicture compared with his own Letters taken at Naseby and some other of his Expresses not yet taken into publike Observation SIR I Have now sent you by your servant those observations which I promised you supposing that they will come to your hands so seasonably as to help to convince you that neither the Parliament began the late wars or that there could be any designe or plot laid of I know not how many years standing either of a factious party amongst them to disturbe the peace of the Kingdom take away the Kings life and his posterity or to alter the Government but that whatsoever hath fallen out since the sitting down of this Parliament hath been enforced by the King himself and by a concurrency of sundry causes arising from his own willfull inclinations the sins of the Nation and Gods speciall hand therein as a fearfull punishment upon us all If you think otherwise and that you shall persist in your errours I doubt not but these Observations will more clearly manifest unto you that the King was in all this tragicall contest both his own enemy and no such innocent Martyr as your party conceives him to have been and of this let his own actions and his private Letters speak and I shall be silent whose principall endeavour hath been no other than to give you satisfaction on your own provocation and that truth may appear to all those whom it concerns besides your self and first to the Observations on the Treaties for Peace after the War began The first overture for peace after the War began was without all question of the Parliaments at Colebrook which how it was accepted of by the King and on the nick thereof pursued by the drawing up of his Army in a mist the slaughter at Brayuford best shews out what was the Kings meaning which how he labours to defend it in some of his Expresses yet without doubt if it were not perfidious yet very suspicious of no fair meaning sure it was very retrograde to the procuring of a peace otherwise than as himself meant to have it by force The next overture for an accomodation was likewise of the Parliaments first motion and agreed upon to be at Oxford a place as inauspicious for treaties as Parliaments for it came to no other issue than to signifie nothing a game wherein the King was wel vers'd a proof whereof amongst many you may find in his eighth Letter to the Queen Jan. 3. 1644. from Oxford viz. The Portugall Agent hath made me two Propositions First concerning the reliase of his Masters brother for which I shall haeve 50000 l. if I can procure his Liberty from the King of Spain the other is for a marriage betwixt my Son Charles and his Masters eldest Daughter for the first I have freely undertaken to doe what I can and for the other I will give such an Answer as shall signifie nothing Observation Here you may first evidently see what a fine juggler the King was grown and into what a streight hee had driven himself to become a broker for money and instead of Friendship to a King to whose Agent in others of his Letters to the Queen he acknowledgeth himself to be more beholding for the transport of his Letters than to the French Embassadour and then as to the motion of marriage to juggle him out with an answer which should signifie nothing judge you whether it would not have been more Kingly to have dealt more plainly with the Agent and to have told him that he liked not the motion on reasons best known to himselfe than to have flam'd him off with a significavit rather of an affront than friendship The third motion for peace was also of the Parliaments first overture and tendred to the King at Oxford and agreed upon to be at Vxbridge where how that likewise was aforehand ordered and his Commissioners tyed up to his will and to the wrack of his own Instructions from which they were not on any conditions to recede is made very clear in the Postscript of his Letter to the Queen number 5th January 19. 1644. from Oxford viz. And be confident that I will not quit Episcopacy nor that Sword which God hath given into my hands Observation If the Quaere here should be made whether God had so absolutely given the power of the Sword into his hands as at his own will and pleasure to unsheath it against his own subjects and the Representative of the Kingdome whom by his Coronation Oath he was obliged to defend and protect doubtlesse no man is so madd to believe that the Kings resolutions in using it as he did to their destruction were so religiously
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
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
his bloody and licentious reigne which necessarily to the Worlds end will give an occasion to rippe up his life and shew to the present and after ages what a Tombe these jugling imposters have erected for him and with what Epitaphes of impiety injustice blood and rapine it will be adorned instead of that glory wherewith they intended to perpetuate to his memory though sufficient and enough hath already been written in discovery of this grand Imposture and to every peece and parcell thereof so much answered as may satisfie all men in their right witts as to others that are out of them and have a desire to be cosened out of their understandings I think an Asian beliefe would better fit them than an European Faith a gallymaufried Alcoran rather than a true and rationall Remonstrance drest with no other Rethorick than the naked truth and shall men be silent when they see it overborne with the multitudinous denyalls flams and falshoods of his defeated and malitious parties Observations on the Kings going into the Scotch Army THe Kings disguized going from Oxford into the Scotch Army then at Newark as it was one of his last shifts so was it a very shrewd one considered as he had laid the design That he went first to them was doubtlesse more out of an apprehension and confidence he had to gain them to his assistance than out of any great good will he bore towards them but sure it was out of an inveterate hatred he bare towards the Parliament the evidence of this truth manifestly appears by the Kings Letter to Ormond Number 27. from Oxford April the 3d. 1646. I shall present you with the principall part thereof at your own leisure you may peruse the whole viz. Having lately received very good security that we and all that do adhere to us shall be safe in their Persons Honours and Consciences in the Scotch Army and that they shall really and effectually joyn with us and with such as will come unto us and joyn with them for our preservation and shall imploy their Army and Forces to assist us to the procuring of a happy and well-grounded Peace for the good of us and our Kingdoms in the recovery of our just Right we have resolved to put our selves to the hazard of passing into the Scotch Army now lying before Newarke and if it shall please God that we come safe thither we are resolved to use our best endeavour with their assistance and with the conjunction of the Forces under the Marquesse of Montrosse and such of our well affected Subjects of England as shall rise for us to procure it may be an honourable and speedy Peace with those who hither to refused to give ear to any means tending thereunto of which our resolution we hold it necessary to give you this advertisement as well to satisfie you and all our Councell and loyall Subjects with you and to whom we will that you communicate these our Letters yet failing in our earnest and sincere endeavours by a Treaty to put an end to the miseries of these our Kingdomes we esteemed our self obliged to leave no probable expedient unattempted to preserve our Crowne and Friends from the Vsurpation and Tyranny of those whose actions declare so manifestly their designs to overthrow the Laws and happy established Government of this Kingdome And now wee have made known to you our resolution we recommend to your speciall care the disposing and managing our affairs on that side as that you shall conceive most for our Honour and Service being confident the course we have taken though with some hazard to our person will have a good influence on that our Kingdome and defer if not altogether prevent the Rebels transporting of Forces from them into that Kingdom And we desire you to satisfie all our well-affected Subjects on that side of our Princely care of them whereof they shall receive the effect as soon as God shall enable us Observations We have here a most quaine piece of Machiavilisme moulded under the Kings wonted and specious pretences of the care he had for the good of his Subjects in procuring an honourable peace and for recovery of his just Rights from those as he sayes which hitherto refused to give way to any means tending thereunto But observe how he intended to accomplish this peace and to put an end to the miseries of the Kingdom and you shall evidently see that it was out of an assurance he had to win the Scots to side with him in a new War and in causing them to break their Faith plighted to the Parliament when at that very time they were to receive 300000 l. towards their entertainment this being but a piece of his design for to that assistance he flattered himself to receive from the Scots he also builds on that mercilesse Army under Montrosse and such of his well-affected Subjects of the English as shall rise for us they are his own words Speak your Conscience was not this a fine plot think you to procure an honourable and speedy peace when his ends were as visible as the Sun shine to continue the Warre and to pollute the Land with more blood under his wonted umbragious pretences of peace and as he says to recover his just rights and what were those rights more than by a new Stratagem to overmaster all under his power or at least to enforce such a peace as might suite to his own desires then he comes to say that he hath left no means unattempted and I beleeve it in his own sence and that was in the conjunction of both those Armies and his inviting of all his well-affected Subjects in England to rise for us and in pursuance of this deep plot he commands Ormond to communicate his Letters to the Councell there and to all his Well-affected Subjects of Ireland that they might know how carefully he was of them by the confidence he had in that course and what a good Influence it would have on that Kingdom viz. in the deferring if not to the utter disappointing of the Rebels transporting of supplyes to the relief of the distressed poor Protestants of Ireland and desites that all his Well-affected Subjects there should take notice of his Princely care of them whereof they should receive the effects so soon as God should enable him a very Princely care indeed if you mark it but you may here see that God would not be mockt neither enable him in his mischievous projects Speak freely whether this King meant well or acted like a Christian in his treacherous endeavour to divert in what possibly he could devise the Parliaments Forces sent for the assistance of their poor Brethren of Ireland when as he had so often protested and born the Parliament in hand how desirous and carefull he was to expedite their supplyes thither and by an Act of his own Assent had impowred the Parliament therewith which here againe in his wonted language he calls
Rebels to speed their recruits against those which he then stiles his Well-affected Subjects On the consideration of the premisses I pray tel me where is that Sophister to be found that can handsomely make an Apology for such foul dissimulations If you cannot finde any I will point you to himselfe as you may see it in his Pourtraicture Cap. XXII on his going into the Scotch Army where he sayes That what Providence denyes to force it may grant to prudence necessity is now my chiefest Counsellour and commands me to study my safety by a disguized withdrawing from my chiefest strength and adventuring on their Loyalty which first began my troubles Here you have an Apology of his owne though surely it is a very poore one where first I pray make your own judgement whether the Scots began his troubles or he theirs if you doubt on 't Straffords and the late Arch Bishops Ghosts will witnesse that he would not suffer them to be at quiet But what prudence was that when he could no longer stand up to infest three Kingdomes at once then to put himself on the precipice of necessity and for his safety to goe into the Scotch Army and why not first into his Throne in the Parliament House at Westminster from whence he fled as from a Serpent and by a thousand most humble Petitions and motions was invited to returne with welcome untill he had wilfully and most perversly made himself uncapable of acceptance and so imbrued himself and the three Kingdoms with the loathsome leprosie of Innocent blood that with Vzziah he had made himselfe more fit for a Cloyster than a Palace I pray speake your owne judgement whether this his prudence was any other than an indefatigable pursuance to fulfill his own will in re-involving the Kingdomes in a more direfull War than he had done before and could Providence doe lesse than to deny him safety when all his studies were devoted to find out any means to disturbe the Kingdomes peace and safety and to destroy Parliaments whereby to make himself an absolute Monarch and of a King of Gentlemen and Freemen to become a Tyrant over so many inanimated Slaves you may without injustiee avouch it that none of his courses were like to thrive when they were continually known to be accompanied with a spirit of errour and that the effects and ends of studying his own safety chiefly consisted in malice and laying of new snares to catch others in in which Providence thought it most fit that himselfe should first be taken Observations on the Irish Rebellion IT is without all question that the King was more indulgent towards the Irish blood-thirsty Rebells than suited with his publick professions and often protestations I shall not say so much in projecting that horrible Massacre of the English there as in protecting those Rebels after the fact was committed having to use his own expression such visible designs and ends of his owne as from the very beginning of the War and before to make use of their service against the English and their Representative as that in any impartiall eye could neither look handsome or suitable to the Religion he professed To treat of the originall ground of this rising or to point out the Author and the authority by which those vile Caytiffes enterprised on so barbarous an act is more than I shall heere deliver for this is as yet a hidden peece of villany although this I can affirm from the mouth of a Gentleman well borne though I dare not say of any great credit that before the Kings going into SCOTLAND and before the flight of the Lord Iermin he being then a kind of an attendant on the Queen and having many times admission into Master Iermins Chambers averres that he saw nine severall Commissions sealed in Master Iermins lodging for so many Regiments to be commanded by the like number of Colonels in Ireland whereof one was to Colonel Plunket but with what seals the Gentleman hath not declared neither do I believe that he was able to distinguish between the Broad and the Privy seale But this is most manifestly knowne that the Rebels for a long time and at the very beginning of their rising styled themselves the King and Queens Army and that they had good authority for doing that which they had done and this is most perspicuous that the King himselfe was ashamed to be seen or to own his owne worke and with what instructions and Commissions he had impowred the Marquesse of Ormand as in his own private Letter to him evidently appears Number 22. December 13. 1644. from Oxford viz. I hope my publick dispatch will give you sufficient instructions and power yet I have thought it necessary for your more incouragement in this necessary worke to make this addition with my own hand as for Poynings act I referre you to my other Letters and for matter of Religion though I have not found it fit to take publick notice of the paper which Browne gave you yet I must command you to give him my Lord Muskery and Plunket particular thanks for it assuring them that without it there could be no peace and that sticking to it their Nation in generall and they in particular should have comfort in what they have done and to shew that this is more than words I do promise them and command you to see it done that the Penal Statutes against Roman Catholicks shall not be put in execution the Peace being made and they remaining in their due obedience and further when the Irish gives me that assistance which they have promised for the suppression of this Rebellion and I shall be restored to my rights then I will consent to the repeat of them by Law but all those of Appeals 〈◊〉 Rome and Premunire must stand all this in Cipher you must impart to none but to those three already named and that with injunction of strict secrecy so 〈◊〉 recommending to your care the speedy dispatch of the Peace of Ireland and my necessary supply from thence as I wrote to you in my last Letter I rest Observations Wee have here in the first place a manifestation of the Kings close and serpentine windings in the next his injunction of strict secrecy to Ormond that that which he had written in Cipher should not be imparted to any but Muskery Browne and Plunket three of the most desperate Rebels in that Kingdom which cannot possibly stand with the Kings innocency neither with the breach of his faith with the Parliament and people or with God in point of his protestations to maintain the true Protestant Religion where it is evident that he plaid fast and loose on all hands as best suited with his necessary affairs and worke as he calles it all his ends tending to this only center to gaine the Irish Rebels to his assistance against the Parliament at any rate though to the prophanation of Religion and his breach of faith with God and
our blessed Saviours own oracle Mat. 12. 2. For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed neither hid which shall not be knowne God knowes and so may you on your better consideration that I have made use of nothing but authentick authority or took up any passage on bare trust neither with the least intention to injure the memory of him who is at rest but only in vindication and manifestation of truth and to make that more visibly knowne to you which long since hath not been unknowne to many which happily if they would might speak more and that as this most unfortunate Prince was of all others most his owne enemy so had providence decreed it that he should be most injurious to his friends a most implacable enemy to Parliaments and utterly averse to all partnership in government other than Hers which was the principall instrument of his ruine the undoing of his posterity and the lamentable destruction of three flourishing Kingdoms As to the present Government and change of the Royalty or any other of your impetuous exclamations with the exceptions you take to the present Form different from the forms of ancient Parliament and as it was so lately altered without King Lords and the major part of the excluded Commons and that those which now sit at Westminster are no other than usurped powers acting in Tyranny as all of your party spares not to belch out both in private and publick I shall instantly give you both a short and satisfactory answer to every of them and first to the Government which you know to be gotten by Conquest and as heretofore I have told you by the same weapon wherewith the King intended to make it absolutely Monarchicall and A la Francoys As to the difference between the old and this new Form of Parliament I answer that the King himself was the first projector both in lessening altering and laming of the Parliament witnesse his taking into his Councell of State the Earles of Hartford Essex Bath the Lords Say St. Maur Falkland and Culpepper all of them known to be the most noted Common-wealths men of both Houses within two moneths of the Parliaments sitting down and within one year after to corrupt neer the moity of the Members of both Houses to make up his Mungrel Parliament at Oxford of set purpose to confuse and ruine all Parliaments by themselves As to the late purging of the Houses it is acknowledged that in the midst of such a confusion as was both raised cherished and fomented by the King himself and the Malignant party it was done by the power of the Army and as I take it on this ground that the major part of both Houses voted for the readmittance of the King on such condition which himself refused which the lesser and more foreseeing part well understood would in the end come to no other issue than the setting him up into his old power so to enable him a new to embroyle the Kingdomes having so long before engaged the Prince in his Quarrell and disciplin'd him in his designes in so much as no other hopes were then left the Parliament but either a perpetuating of the War and more bloodshed or the invassalage of the Nation which necessarily would be the consequence on the admittance either of the Father or the Sonne upon these grounds 't is confest that the Soldiery ended the controversie in assisting the weaker party in Parliament though doubtlesse the more able in judgement and foresight of the future evills and calamities which in all probability might and would befall the Nation which to prevent on the evidence of the Kings obstinacy it was resolved to remove the Effects by taking away the Cause in calling the principall Author of all the former bloodshed to his publick tryall to stop which issue it was farther resolved to cut him off together with his whole posterity and to cast that pilot overboard that not more out of ignorance than wilfulnesse would obstinately have sunke the Ship of the Publick in the vast Ocean of his Prerogative had it not been timely rescued and warp't into the safe Harbour of a Republick and in change the Regall Government into a Commonwealth as you now see it established by power and by the same power probable it is they will uphold it which as it is commonly conceived was the true state and managery of that businesse Where you may observe it as a very remarkeable event that even the major part of of both Houses which had stood so constant to the trust of their Countries to the very Vote of No more Addresses and were inclined to readmit the King as we may beleeve by Gods just judgement were taken away by force as the King himselfe by fraud had long before drawne away so many of the Members purposly to lame and weaken all Parliaments in the future Sir These are passages of a very transcendant nature and too high for our understanding and we know Gods ways and works are unsearchable yet as the Wise man tells us There is nothing new under the Sun and is there any thing whereof it may be said see this is new it hath been already fold time and was before us howsoever when you have spoken the worst you can of those which now sit in Parliament you cannot deny but the most of them are of the old legall Electron and the relicts of the old Form they which have been the cause of the maiming or lessening the number and quality of the old Form you may thanke them for it and not blame those that remaine faithfull to their trust for some kinde of Government the people must have and you evidently see that God hath given them both Courage to stand fast to the last and power to enable them to act as they do which as heretofore I have told you wil either bend you to obedience or breake you in your resistance As to the Injustice wherewith you charge them and the Tyranny you so much exclaim against I take not upon me to be so much their Champion as to defend every of their actions or any Injustice of which not unlikely some of them may be guilty for where power is invested faults there may be and foule ones too yet this much may be said in their defence that those of known integrity fail not to look into the demeanour of the faul ty and by severe punishment to make them examples of Justice I shall say no more but that should they faile in doing righteousnesse Judgement stands at their owne doores and the same God which gave them the power they now have will as soon devest them of it as he bequeathed it unto them and Samuel will tell them If you doe wickedly you shall be consumed both you and your King Now Sir for a close I shall onely tell you that it sufficeth me and all sober spirits that having thus long lived free from bloodshed and plunder under this Government which so lately under the Kingly power the whole Nation felt to their great grief and sorrow it behoves us then that we all rest content with Gods good will and pleasure and leave this great change to him as a worke of his own which I may say with Gamaliel If it be not of God it will surely fall but if from him he will establish it in spite of all those which shall withstand it t is most true that the Contributions and Taxes which you urge to be Tyrannically imposed on the whole Nation are very heavy to which I have already given you an answer viz. that we may all thanke your party for it that they are not onely continued but increast through your partyes onely means which cease not by their assiduall plots to disturbe the present peace and Government to their owne losse and grief of such as would willingly bear the burthen so they might enjoy their peace and quietnesse as having learned the sweetnesse of that old Addage defend me and spend mâ— In a word more I shall advise you in particular to rest content with that Government which Providence hath allotted us under which you may as yet live both secure and plentifull if you please dispose your self therefore to yeeld that Obedience which becomes all those that love the publick and their own domestick peace If not I feare me you will kicke against the pricks hurt if not utterly ruine your self and Family as many thousands of perverse Fools have done and fail not to remember that there is a Court of Iustice that spares none which shall disturbe the publick peace and that Government which we may safely beleeve God hath and will establish This is the Counsell of him who really hath a care of your preservation and so rests Your well-wishing Friend if you so please to esteem him Loe this is the man that made not God his strength but trusted in the abundance of his riches and strengthned himselfe in his wickednesse P. 52. 7. The words of his mouth were smoother than Butter but War was in his heart his words were softer than oyle yet were they drawn Swords Psalm 55. 21. But thou O Lord shalt bring them downe into the pit of destruction bloody and deceitfull men shall not live out halfe their dayes verse 23. FINIS * Balzack Sir Walter Raleigh * Barclay adver Monarch lib. 3. cap. 8. * Grotius de jure belli pacis lib. 1. cap. 4. * The Earl of STRAFFORD * â—1 Kings 11. 4 5 6 7. * Mountague * Vide the Juncto * Sir John Broke Sir Ralph Hopton Mr. Partridge and Mr. Green were of that Committee * Rom. â—â— * 1 Sam. 8. 3 4 5. * Rom. 13 4. * Deut. 17 19. Ezek. 45. 9 46. 18. â— * Deut. 17 19. Ezek. 45. 9 46. 18. â— * Vide the Juncto quinto Maij 1649 * The first copy was supprest expunged by the Bishops and the old Knight committed by K. JAMES to the Tower by the instigation of the Prelates * The Militia * Sir Rob. Cotton in the life of H. 3. * Psal. 28 Proverbs 28. 13. * The Earl of Strafford * Eccl. â— 9. 10. * 1 Sam. 1â— 15.