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
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
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
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
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
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