The Life and Reign of King Charles

The Preface.

T O write the Lives of Princes, in another world, and fallen, through their own frailties, or by the influence of others counsels from the high pitch of Sovereignty (for regality is a slippery precipice) in charity may be allowed a fair and favorable memorial; but for a King falling by the high hand of Justice, not for common faults and frailties (incident to human nature) but presumptuous sins, sins of lood, perfidy, cruelty, rapine, willfully 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 favor than to be set out to the life of their Tyrannous actions; though in pity to him, who hath already paid his debt to Nature, and his offenses, much of his exorbitant government and irregular motions might, and doubtless would have been concealed, more tenderly entreated, and himself sufferered to rest where he is, in the silent grave, had not that madness 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 lain 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 himself to take his own rest, and sleep (as he could not) quietly and peaceably like other men.)

I am not ignorant what senseless 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 licentious reigns, 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 amiss, when many thousands of oppressed and desolated families must stand mute, whilst 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 persuade 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 willful man: if to speak truth in due season, or to be the faithful witness 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 reigns of Kings, leaving an everlasting stain and taint on their memories; how profane 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 madness to accuse Samuel, and the Authors of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and Israel, in leaving to after ages the Tyranny of Saul, in murthering at once eighty of God's priests? that presumptuous sin and perfidious fact of David, in plotting the death of Uriah, that he might enjoy his Wife which lay in his bosom? Rehoboams Tyrannies? the Cruelties and Idolatries of Jeroboam, who stands branded, as the Son 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 Foreign examples, what offense in reason can be charged on Matthew Paris, Ho • eden, Sir Th. Moor, Daniel, and infinite others, of our own Historians, for describing the vices and tyrannies of our own Kings both ancient and moderne? What injury have they committed in their Registers, in setting down 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 John was one of the most subtle, persideous and bloody Princes that history hath afforded? That Henry the third his son (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 sons, and usurping the Crown, was more wicked than the worst? That Henry the seventh was the descendant of a Bastard son of John of Gaunt, begotten on Catherine Swinford another man's Wife, though legitimated by act of Parliament, yet had no other title to the Crown but that of his Sword? That six of his descendants, and of our last Princes, claim their rights to the Crown 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 root 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 James, and our late King Charles, were discendants from the same Stock of Henry of Richmond, the one who most of all our Kings secretly, cunningly, and underhand endeavored, and laid the plot to undermine the freedoms of the english nation, and King Charles to have followed the design with more plots, wiles, and stratagems, than any of our former Kings, raised more treasure by undue exactions, and spilled more innocent blood than all of the Norman Kings before him?

If the premisses are evident truths, as they cannot be denied; why then should they be concealed, and wrapped up from the sight of the world? being so pertinent to be left as Looking glasses for their Successors to behold the deformed faces of their Ancestors, so fit to be made known to the deluded number of the people, baffled and befooled 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 entailed his designs) than necessity hath enforced them to do, in preservation of the Nation from that inevitable inthralldome, which eminently was like, and would have befallen the universal 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 less Tyranny, and to change the Kingly Government into a Republic, when as this most willful Prince stood so constantly fixed to his depraved Principles, that no persuasions of a Court of Parliament, no reason but his will could prevail, 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 endeavored, and to wade all over in blood to the accomplishment, as 'tis most manifest by all his actions, and the sequel of his own 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 tis manifest in the fatal 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 compel'd to attempt, and happily accomplisht in the very like case, when as on their many (though fruitless, 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 redress 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 unnatural obedience, as to be deprived of self-defense, and to sit still without seeking their own preservations, whilst an irregular King shall either cut their throats, enslave, 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 joint opinion, that Subjects in such cases, both by God's 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 Kingdom, 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 madness 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 prevail against the Parliament, or enable him to attain to any piece of his ends, whose boundless ambition, lead him (as we may safely believe) 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 believe, that happily in the end he might be the Conqueror, 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 parallel than that of Mahomet; considerations which for the general 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 party hath decked his Effigies, and presented him to the public 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, easy, and believing people of this Nation, too long mislead, and cosened out of their understanding by his usual protestations, which God willing shall be made evidently clear 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 several disputes on such particular subjects, as may be seen in the subsequent reply; ranckt between the breviary of the Kings reign, and the observations on several of his own Letters and Expresses; and lastly to confute a new sprung up scandal most ungratefully and maliciously raised against the Parliament; viz. That the present change of the Government both Civil and Ecclesiastical, 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 adjoin something of the place of his birth, and manner of his breeding; That he was born in Scotland, 1600. and remained there until the second year of his Fathers reign, needs no further attestation; That on the ceasing of the sickness 1602. at London (for its ominously remarkable, that two most furious plagues immediately followed the very ingress both of the Father and the Son to their Crowns) under the style and title of Duke of York, he was conveyed from Edinburgh 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 less to reclaim that intemperature of his natural constitution; which as the Gentlewomen themselves have both often related and protested, so are there yet enough alive which will justify 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 prophetical judgment to befall the Kingdom, in case on King James his Father and his own decease the Crown should descend on him; God knows and I call him to witness that I shall not willingly present a syllable to the prejudice of his memory, otherwise then for truths sake (abused) and the general satisfaction of such as would be rightly informed thereof, having never had any cause given me to write more or less than becomes me in sincerity, confessing that considering the distance I stood in to be a partaker of his secrets, as having been only a poor servant of his Fathers, until weary of the Court I retired, having seen enough of the vanity thereof, and of both reigns, though on some urgent occasions, in my Addresses to him, I have had the honor of his gracious aspect; and sometimes good words from his own mouth, never any other injury, than in my particular sufferings, involved in the general calamity proceeding from the late fatal war, of which I cannot in justice excuse him whose ambition and willfulness to rule alone, and without control 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 quarrel 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: Its most certain that he attained to some competent measure of literature (for a Prince) and as I have some reason to believe sucked in with the most of the Episcopal leaven, 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 Prelatical Tutors, though he after proved (at best) a mere formal 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 Prelatical tetinue; Its a known truth, that in the midst of that long, fruitless, and restless pursuit of the old Kings for a marriage with the Infanta, Secretary Murrey who had then the chiefest influence on his Counsels, had privately disuaded 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 own persuasions, 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 papistical 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 workmanship, which cost the honest man the loss of his place, and expulsion the Court: Howsoever the King out of his restless desire to match his Son in the House of Austria soon turned 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 dishonor, and disgrace to the Prince (after six months stay in Spain) he returned to London, the 5 of October following his going from hence, and about 5 months after his arrival the old King died 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 general, 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 general 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 Compass 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 impartial and flattering Author, Aulicus Coquinariae, neither to give over much credit to King James his Court, who in some particulars speaks much more of truth than the other babbler, who with no color at all of sincerity and knowledge of those times talks at random, palpably and ridiculously rendering King James for the only Platonicall, Politick, Peaceable and pious King of his time, a Prince as he would have it believed, the Paragon for his wisdom and care, the fruits whereof no rational man could ever yet discern, when the plain truth was, and the right measure of his peaceable reign was well known to all Europe, to be the only 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 mere fear of offending the SPANIARD in the least punctilio, but sat musing at home how to improve his Sovereignty, to devise projects how to raise monies to satiate his needy and greedy Scotch Courtiers, by privy seals, benevolences, sale of Forest lands, asserts, woods, and Crown Lands, and to pick quarrels with his Parliaments, and to entaile them to his heirs General; his successor proving no ill scholar in putting in practice his Fathers precepts, and for the better invading of the liberties of the Subjects, to suppress Parliaments, which never offended him, but in refusing to supply his prodigalities, when himself 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 Christendom, and yet to leave him the richest King of the Western World, which if the plain truth of the affairs of those times may without offense be made manifest, were the only fruits of his so much magnified and peaceable reign, for I may in sincerity say it over and over again, and no other than a known truth, that the not drawing of his Sword, in the Count Palatines quarrel, to which he was so often importuned, by most of the German Princes, invited, yea pressed by his own Council 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 fruitless Embasseys, and to the greatening of the Austrian Family, which had long befoold and baffled him even to the derision and scorn of all the Princes of Europe; as to his Justice of which the Court Cook tattels, the whole Kingdom can witness, how he measured it out, by suffering the rigor and uttermost penalty of the Law, to fall on the accessories in Sir Tho. Overbuties case, and to take the Principalls into his mercy, tis true (not Somerset into his former favor) yet sure we are to stop his mouth from telling of tales, he gave him at once in pure gift so much of the Crown Lands, as were well worth to be sold 100000 pounds, though it melted away like wax in the Sun, and himself to die a stark beggar, and in infamy, and as to that his most excellent chaste Lady, and Virgin Bride, let the ghosts of Sir James Stuart, Sir George Wharton, and Prince Henry speak, and not him, this is most manifest, that by divine justice, she was known to die living, and of so loathsome a disease, that her own Gentlewomen, have often protested it before many credible witnesses, they could not endure the Chamber where she lay, neither scarce the next adjacent for the horrible stink that a long time before she expired, issued from her carcase, and polluted the air; I could speak much more of the carriage of that foul business, and of others, not pertinent to this place, and so can many more persons of honor 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 fabric of his untruths, were known forgeryes of their own making; and as to the Archbishops particular, he comes not near the truth, that honest man alone, as it is well known, withstood the King alone and the other Bishops, in their base compliance 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 seen, passages, which as it seems, the talking tatler knew not, neither little of truth, which he assumes to relate, and howsoever he hath farcit 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 man's 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, until I may have the happiness to hear further from him, then doubtless I shall not fail 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 himself to look to, who takes upon him with such palpable flattery to present King James for such a Saint-like Prince, when as had he either known a piece 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 wholly devoted himself, and left it to his Son as an infelicious legacy, and three Kingdoms destruction, which were without all question, the fruits and effects of his pe ceable reign. But briefly now to his only Son, and the heir of his fathers unhappy peace, and the prosecutor of his own, his posterities, and the Kingdoms ruin.

THE REIGNE OF KING CHARLS, Or the pseudo-Martyr discovered, &c.

K ING CHARLS, then Prince of Wales, began his unfortunate Reign on the expiration of his Father King James at Theobalds the 27 of March 1627. At his very first entry to the Crown, 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 Son, 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 Sickness, 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 kind was ever enterprised by him, was both inauspicious and fatal, loss of Honor to himself, 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 picked quarrel against his first Parliament, which shows out unto us, on how small, or no cause at all, he would be quarrelsome with his Great Councils, and what he would be to all other Parliaments. And the more to show 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 honorable and fitting terms was not denied him.

The Crown at this time was exceedingly indigent, and indeed so beggarly and indebted, that the Royal Revenues suffised not to defray the Court expenses; 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-Countries.

Wise men might then well believe, that the King could not possibly be so wanting to himself, or so poor in treasure, as to be put on so dishonorable a straight, 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 Lord's, attendants then on the new Queen at Paris; where especially the Duke, amongst others, out vyed all the French Lord's in the sumptuousness of his expenses, and bravery of his apparel; 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 doubtless far too many to be maintained with any ordinary expense: She was then not only (in comparison) a mere 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 show, but most certain it is, that Madam Nurse (like another 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 Emperors 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 Kitchen; 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 ado prodigally maintained at Salisbury, whilst the King and the Lord's of his Council were all to seek how to defray his own expenses, and the wantonness of a Court, promiscuously pestered, both with domestic, foreign, idle, and useless numbers of both sexes.

I was then in that Progress, and usually in the Court, and a sad witness into what straits 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 green a Reign was both attempted, and with boldness put in execution: The prodigality of the Court then so much out-went the Royal Revenues, that the Kings Officers and Purveyors had not wherewithal to defray the expense of the King and Queens Tables. The King, to begin the first President of his arbitrary Governmen, sends for the Farmers of the Customs, and gains what possibly he could from them, which by reason of the sickness, and damp of Trade at London, would then have put back 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, Weston and Cottington, (all new men and of very small beginnings) 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 designs, yet I am confident none of them all durst advise him for anything 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 supplies, 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 pressed 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, until 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 principal Gentlemen of the West, which were known or conceived to be monyed men: it is most evident that even then, and at his first access to the Crown 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 legal, as a piece of his birth-right, and of right belonging to him as a King, without looking into the nature of the English Sovereignty, his will was the law he intended to rule by; as to Parliaments, his meaning as it appears was the same with Louis 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 public, 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 pestilential Summer being well spent, upon the approach of the Winter, and decrease of the Sickness, the King, and the young Queen, with all her French train, draws nearer to the City of London, and being still in his wonted predicament of want, in supply of the Court expenses, 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 color 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 Wentworth, who to show what he would be, and how serviceable to the Kings designs he might be, was employed into the North, where he rigorously levied a very considerable sum on the Gentlemen and Yeomen of those parts: Weston (another of these Arbitrary beagles) as an overseer to the Earl of Pembroke, and other Commissioners, was employed into the West; the treasure which was by this lawless project raised being come together, was a very vast sum, but it was as soon issued as levied, and served not to defray the moity of the Court expenses; 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 Lord's; the King being well acquainted therewith, comes into the Peers House, and tells them, that he could be a witness to clear the Duke in evry particular of that charge, and thereupon in terror 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 proofs 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 June 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 natural obstinacy and perverseness of the violent will of this most unhappy Prince, who in affront and despite of the Justice 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 God's Iudgments may not be arrested, and it is he, that mauger the teeth of all human powers, will in his own good time bring to light, and to Judgment, that crying sin of Blood; and have we not seen this verified, to our amazement? the Duke shortly thereupon to have died, by the stab of a knife, with no other words or prayers in his mouth, than God's wounds I am slain; and this most unhappy Prince to have ended his days at his own Gates, by the axe of God's 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 sins of bloodshed throughout the three Kingdoms, but that of a Pharasaicall justifying of himself and his innocence, insisting to his last, without any repentance or sensibilitie of so much innocent blood spilled through his only willfulness, but only of one wicked man's, having throughout the whole course of the late and lamentable contest between him and the Parliament, evermore covered over that stubbornness of his natural inclination with those false colors 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 Judgment of a Court of Parliament.

And have we not seen those bold and principal instruments of his, whom he employed 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 innocence, and without so much as one word of the repentant Publican, God be merciful 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 sovereignty 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 near to the metropolis of the Kingdom, and the sickness 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, Plays, and Banquets (all in expencefull and sumptuous ostentations) were the frequent and assidual exercises of the Court; on the one side (as to devotion) the Queen had her Mass, and Mass-Priests, on the other side the King with his Laodicean luke-warm and fawning Prelates, in a mere formality in show of Godliness, God knows without the power thereof, and in as near a compliance 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 knows tragical enough in the close.

The Bishops which in the former reign had for divers reasons of State been admitted to the old Kings privacies, and had special Influence on his Counsels, were likewise transmitted to the favor and indulgency of this King, but more especially in reference to the Presbytery of Scotland so averse to absolute Sovereignty, 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 favor) that spared not to insinuate how dangerous the Puritan party here in England was (as of a fraternity with the Presbyterians of Scotland) & would be (if not timely looked unto) to the advance of Sovereignty: apprehensions, which as they soon took fire with the father, so as much if not more with the son; hence it was that the most active of them were admitted either to his favor or Council of State, but especially Doctor Laud the Bishop of London, after Archbishop of Canterbury, a person of a very subtle 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 turn as possibly he could chose out of the 26. Prelates.

There was also about this time (as before is intimated) taken into the Kings favor, 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 own, bethought himself 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, bold, and haughty a spirit as he could possibly have picked out of all the nobility: Time will show us, and our own lamentable experience may better demonstrate, how the one in Church affairs, the other in civil 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 ruin and their Masters.

To leave this digression, we have left the King and Queen at the Court, let us return 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 God's service and true worship, otherwise than in a formality or show of Godliness, either in the Court or throughout the Kingdom; sure we are, that the Queens superstitious worship was specially provided for, and a sort of Locusts there were (in addition to her own Chaplins) admitted the Kingdom, styled by the name of Capuchins (but cunning knaves) and for these a new Chapel 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 Mass Priests were frequently permitted throughout the Land, not only in a tacit connivence, but in an open way of toleration, and in contempt of God's true worship.

We may well admit, that the ways which the King then took could not be welpleasing to him, which was never yet pleased with an Idolatrous, mixed, and half-faced worship; or that the gayety and wantonness of a promiscuous Court, could be maintained without an excessive charge; neither that a perfidious show and offer of a war with France in the defense 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 siege then before the Town of R • 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 instead of defending them, they were not only slaughtered at Sea by the Kings shipping, but by plain Treachery both their Cause undone, and their forces defeated by Land; a sin, which God in his justice could not pass over unpunished, yet carried on in such a mystical way; & in that attempt on the Isle of Rea, to the loss of honor and blood of some of the bravest men of the Nation; insomuch that the World to this very day hath been held in suspense, to what Religion the King himself stood most inclined or whether the Father or the Son, which with such ardency sought the Alliance of Spain and France, (or else nowhere) 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 Apostolic see, and that his Holiness 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 Queen, and the state of the Protestant Religion here, (howsoever openly professed by both Kings) reduced to the next step of conformity with Rome; when as that sordid and base compliance 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 encourage them than to have withstood either of them in the least of their many irregularities, & looseness in Religion; & such was the baseness of these fawning Sycophants, that the common theams of the Court Pulpits, throughout both reigns, were purposely picked out where on to draw conclusions and doctrines of arbitrary power, which was the usual ladder most of them clim'd to preferment; whence also we may observe God's judgments, both to have been shortly after poured out on the persons themselves and their functions, in their extirpation, and total 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 run 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 annual Treasure or very near, 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 work upon the nature of Princes coming out of poor Kingdoms into richer, and with what Conscience they could dispence the care of their own souls, to become as sponges to suck up the fruits of the poor passive people of England, gained out of the labor of their hands and sweat of their brows, 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 appear, with how many slights and wyles, with how much care, trouble and vexation of spirit, with what expense of blood and treasure did this King labor to enslave the English Nation, and to reduce the poor people (as naturalized vassals) under the bondage of his lawless 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 oppress 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 favors, what large concessions, and with what compliance and commiseration the late King took care of the Irish Rebells, without the least retrospect how much English blood had been most barbarously spilled 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 pitiful 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 Favors, Privileges, and Countyes were without asking offered to be confer'd on the Scots, 1641. as he went unto them, on the only conditions, that they would engage with him against the English Parliament. On these considerations, can it sink into any rational man's conception, but that he was an inexorable enemy to the Nation? kind to his own (if they would have served his turn) and an indeered Friend to those bloody Irish, and that on all opportunities his intent was to ruin 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 year of his Reign, and notwithstanding the many ways 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 design; the discontinuance of Parliaments conduced more to the advance of what he intended to raise by power, than he could expect by the aid 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 press or induce a Court of Parliament to be over-liberal with the purses of their Electors; yet in this exigent and straight he suddenly resolves to call a Parliament, where amongst many passages and debates, Finch the Speaker of the lower house, plaid his first prize, in his assidual disclosing to the King whatsoever past in the House; insomuch as being discovered, and on his usual 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 enforced 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 Lord's of his Council (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 own 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 enjoin'd the Lord's of his Council, 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 interval; the King begins roundly with all sorts of pro • ects, and to raise money both without the leaves of the Subjects, and against the known Laws of the Kingdom; 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 general, 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 Pe • 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 Jointure) (then newly consigned) one hundred thousand pound Per Annum sufficed not for to defray her own expenses, and confident I am, what by sales procured by her solicitations, as much more was yearly drayned out of the Kings purse to satisfy that nasty train 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 certain it is, that that Pigmy Mountebanck (Montague) 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 sums her Priests and Jesuits, Musicians, Fiddlers, and others of her retinue got and amassed by her only suit to the King, who then denied her nothing that she desired; for it is most true, that before she attained the age of twenty years, she began of a Pupil to be the Kings Regent, and the afterstory will assure it, she became a fatal participant with him in most of his Counsels, and his directrix in the Government, but after her Mothers arivall both of them to have gained an interest in his inmost secrets and principal transactions of State; an evident truth, and more than stood with the Kings honor, much less than suited with the welfare of the Nation.

These prodigal expenses at Court could not choose but impoverish the Kings exchequer, whether very little of the Royal 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 usual 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 turn, and by degrees the Kings Patents incircuited and extended to Salt, Butter, Sope, Leather, Wine, Sugar, Allum, Sea-coal, 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 illegal power he might raise moneys in what proportion he would, where and when he pleased, without Parliaments, and so was it stated by the terror which that fluttering bird Finch imprest on the Judges to declare it legal, by their extrajudiciall sentences, though (for their honor be it spoken) three of them as Crook, Hutton, and Denham withstood it as a most illegal and unheard-of taxation against and destructive to the fundamental Laws of the Land, and Liberties of the People.

We shall now pass it over, though it was an invention which of it self 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 years whilst it was put in practice, raised not so little at 1000000 of pounds.

It is without question that what by monopolies, the inhancing of the Customs 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 Crown Lands, besides Subsidies, and the Royal 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 forty years, and yet none of our Kings had less occasion, and this King more wanting, as having for twelve years together no wars considerable, neither any in expectation, more than such as willfully 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 design of invassalating the 3. Kingdoms, 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 control so many of his illegal and irregular exactions, in farther advance of his grand design, 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 public 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 principal, which invited him with the more boldness, and less fear, to the perfecting and speedy accomplishment of his main design.

We may in the way of our relation avouch it, and that for truth, that both the Father and the Son were the most careless Courtiers of their people of any of our Kings, and as regardless of the love and reverent esteem the universal Nation carried towards them; an inexcusable error, and shows 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 suspicion, and an error which all wise and cunning Statists shun and avoid, as tending to obscure the worth and dignity of their Master, but in Princes it is a Virtue, that most of all other their deportments takes most and soonest in the people's affections; we may boldly say it, that neither of these two Princes were ever guilty of that attractive Virtue, only it hath been since observed, that at his coming out of Scotl. 1641. he was very prodigal 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 frugal, but that there were a sort about his person to whom he participated his secrets, and committed the managery of his arbitrary work, which did sufficiently lick their fingers: We shall omit the Duke, for he died within two years of the Kings access, Digby and Cottington, which in the former reign had laid the foundations of their after greatness; but they which in this reign, (and in the midst of the Kings necessities) spent lavishly, lived at high rates, and amassed most, were Weston 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 shown out by what means, ways and instruments he raised monies to supply his necessities, and prodigallities of the Court; what hitherto he acted, was in calm and peaceable times, though not without murmuration; We shall anoncome to the hostile, that fatal and sanguinary part of his unfortunate reign. He had hitherto led on his design in a fore-game, yet still in his wonted way of want, the Queen-mother arriving, holp on his expenses, Strafford the Archbishop, and Cotington, as the Kings prime agents had fitted all necessaries in a readiness; both the English and Irish patient in what formerly they had suffered, and ready to be ridden and spurred to the quick; the mode of the French Goverment being still in the eye of the Kings design (as left unto him by his Fathers legacy) and now again revived and quickened by the Queen Mothers instigation, a Lady fatal to all places wheresoever she resided; Strafford having raised in Ireland an Army of Papists, to help on, and at a deah lift: and about this time there were divers Commissions issued out to certain Lord's 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 Earl 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 Majesty's special 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 Soldiers, and to fortify 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 willful Malignant make his own judgment, when as the whole Kingdom was never in a greater calm of peace, loyalty and quietness, 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 aabout that time dispatched 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 anything now stood as Remora, in the way of the Kings great design, but those refractory Scots, this was the block that in the first place must be removed; to begin this work of darkness, 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 original, as a project of the old Kings, to introduce the Episcopal power and Church Government there conformable to that of England, and to suppress or master that of the Kirk & Presbyterian power, as the only obstruction to absolute Sovereignty.

God's providence and his ways are insearchable, and the carriage of this work of darkness is very remarkable, it hath left the world in a maze how the Kings designs by this Scotch enterprize should turn and overthrow the whole frame and fabric of all his former projections, and of so fair 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 merely by the willfulness of his own irregular motions, more beloved, reverenced and obeyed, than any of his Predecessors.

The state of the three Kingdoms, as abovesaid, but a little before this Scotch enterprise ( as to a any War from abroad, mutinies and insurrections at home) was well known to be in as great a calm of Peace and quietness as in any reign since the Conquest, the subject passive, loyal and obedient to the Kings will and pleasure, himfelf at peace and amity with all his Allies, Confederates, and Neighbor-Princes; nothing could be Imagined to have troubled him but his own ambition, and those restless appetites of his which would not suffer him to enjoy content in the midst of prosperity, and to rest satisfied in the fruition of more abundance than ever any King of England attained unto; In this requiem (could he have seen it) was his soul restless, and as we may of truth say, by no instigation more troubled than by hers which had the honor of his Bed; an unhappy unquietness which his principal privadoes rather added fuel to the fire thereof than water to quench it; they had studied his inclination, which was the rule they walked by, not how to apply wholesome medicines to cure the raging malady of his ambition, which by none was more cherished 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 labored therein, as himself, whose sunction and office (if grace had guided them) it properly was rather to have applied antidotes than venom to their Masters disease, and to have told him plainly where the fault lay.

But to return to the relation of this Scotch enterprise; the King as before is intimated, through mere necessity was induced to call a Parliament (not to reform 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 public 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 needless War; the Queens Servants on the other side were notwithstanding exactly paid.

It would be superfluous and impertinent to describe the whole story of this design, so obvious and generally known to all the Kingdom; how first this affair was carried 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 enforce their conformity; what Flames, Invectives, and Comments flew here abroad of the Bishops penning of their Rebellion; how again the Scots stood upon their punctillioes, in defense 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 Majesty's, at their first Treaty in the North, and the averseness of the Kings soldiers to embrace the quarrel, the King granted them his royal Pascification, and sent them home well satisfied; how again on his Majesty's return, 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 dishonorable Peace, and obstructive to his own designs; how then this needless and willful quarrel 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 styled: when as by the Free-quarter of his first Army, most parts of the County of York were beggared and the Soldiery unpaid, how the Parliament and generally the people abhorred 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 Council sat 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 Council) after (styled, 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 willful designs; what preparations the Scots made to defend themselves, and how with a puissant Army they first entered the Kingdom under the Command of Lesley, who made his way by force, with some loss of blood on both sides at Newburn, and after that marched peaceably to Newcastle, which he fortified, and from thence sent a Petition in the name of the whole Nation to the King, that their cause might be heard, before more blood 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 publicly known, and so particularly manifested in many points, as in the following Reply and Animadversions may appear, both for the general 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 honor 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 accompanied 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 authentic 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 view, and a diligent perusal, and comparing the Kings public expresses with his private practices, as may apparently be seen by any that will 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 himself living should with such boldness stand on his justification, or that any since his death (endued 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 lustful and pernicious designs, in invassalating the poor people, which, until himself gave, and prosecuted the occasion of their falling from him, and were enforced to withstand his violent courses, was more beloved, honored, and obeyed than any of our Kings. A Prince that raised and wasted more Treasure, willfully spilled more Innocent blood, devasted more the lands and habitations of his Subjects, ruined more families, and more embroiled 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 shall 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 Kingdoms, 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 adjudged 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 defense, 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 fear 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 souls slaughtered for the satiating of one Princes lustful will and pleasure, since he that repents not hath said it, that the Land shall not be cleansed until the blood of one murderer 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 judgment) to reign over us, and in his justice hath likewise burnt it, and brought that fatal end upon him, and his Fathers house, according to his own and often Imprecations: We shall conclude this first scene of our Narrative with the Kingdoms fate:

The Authors reply to an invective Remonstrance against the Parliament and present Government, wherein the whole managery of the late War is exactly described.

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 raising the late War against him, as a premeditated Plot long since hatchit 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-brains; neither do you rest there, but you proceed to charge those which now sit at Westminster with many other fowl Calumnies; to all which in their proper place I shall not fail to give you a particular answer; though I could have wisht, that you had fixed 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 mere suggestion of your own 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 mere malicious fiction of your own rather than a simple verity, and so unbecoming a Gentleman of your quality, as that in plainness I take the boldness to tell you, you might on better reason with Copernicus his Disciples, have aver'd another world to be in the Moon, th • n to have devised and broached so vain and senseless an untruth; But since tis more of your will than chance, to fall on so groundless a fable and on a theam so old and over-worn; might I have advised, you should have turned your tone (which would have been much more for your honor) and aver'd, that the King, even from the very first entrance of his reign (answerable to his Fathers instructions) began his arbitrary work, and in pursuance thereof had laid sundry destructive and dark plots, how to invassalate the three Nations, and by degrees to reduce them all under one Intire, arbitrary and absolute sovereignty; 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 poor people against themselves, which never any King of England durst attempt, otherwise than by public consent, and against a foreign enemy, and at last to wage open Narre against his own 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 shown yourself 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 tis the very same at present which invites all of you to flatter and sooth up yourselves 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 public interest ought to be given up, for the fulfilling of your desires, and of one man's willful pleasure, a strange dotage that hath possessed 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 eagerness and confidence you think yourself able to defend being forced through your importunity, and the nature of the task you put upon me, to run over the whole progress and managery of all the late Kings designs, visible and long since very well known to all men of common understanding; though I confess, I do not much marvel that yourself (amongst the rest of the facill belief) have been deceived by the Kings wonted 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 maintain the true Protestant Religion, how careful and studious to uphold the Laws 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 truly the spirits of many wise men were amazed and a long time stood staggering what to be. lieve in the case, and doubtful whether the Kings cause or the Parliaments was most just, which party gave the first offense, which began the War, and of this number I confess myself 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 myself (that which before I only admitted in a kind of Ambitious belief) 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 Council) to play his own part, I shall not say better, but more dextrous and cunningly for his own ends, and to the reducing of the Kingdoms under his absolute power, than any of those could direct him, whom he most trusted with the mannagery of his designs and secrets; truly, 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 Justice of his Cause, it being in the next degree to a miracle that after so full a disclosure of the Kings jugglings and dissemblings there should any remain to take his part, and the wonder is the more remarkable 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 deaf and diffident of visible truths 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 falsehood, and to have bard you from the right use of distinguishing between reason well weighed, and fraud umbrated and attested, with the usual artifices of the royal protestations, a faculty (by your favor) 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 usual phrase was to undeceive the people, (prepossessed 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 harm, as we find it evident in the silly devises and quaint impresses of his money coined at Oxford, pretending that he took up arms in defense of the Protestant Religion, the Laws and Liberties of the People, and the Privileges of Parliament, when the direct contrary appeared by all his Actions; and when as it was manifest, that before he began to quarrel with the Scots, he tacitly intended, and even then designed to suppress Parliaments, or so to qualify them, that they should be only useful 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 Jesuitical 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 general connivence, amounting to a tacit toleration to all Papists, together with idolatrous Masses, both in his own house permitted, andused throughout the Kingdom in most Papists houses without control, & in imitation of Solomon, after that by his Wives he was turned 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 Reign, 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 verify 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 accountable 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, Judges over all their Subjects, and in all causes, and yet accountable 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 do their money.

Whence you may observe this Kings Principles, which in the Speech it self everywhere extant you may find, that even this King, whom the world styled the Platonicall King, and was reputed a pious Prince, took the hint of his tyrannical principles from a Bishop, who in the very face and audience of a Court of Parliament, preached all these fine arbitrary doctrines, and yet in the Speech itself, fol. quarto, you shall find the King defends him: Hence you way perceive by whose counsels the late King steered all the course of his government after his accession to the Crown, with the reason of his seldom calling of Parliaments, and his often dissolving of such as he did call without their due effects. I shall now faithfully relate the whole progress of the War, and by what female advice he was directed to the reducing of all the three Kingdoms 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 known truth that the King in that his unnecessary raising of a war 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 Reign is exactly laid down) could that great head-piece, & the grand Master for carrying on of all his Arbitrary work, show him how to dis-entangle himself out of that harle, wherein his own willful Inclinations had encumbered 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 General in the room of the Earl of Northumberland, whither they were no sooner arrived, but they found the Soldiery 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 half a Regiment, the Scots possessed of the Town of Newcastle, the Nobility having been exhausted in their attendance the Summer before, yet to show 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 address themselves to the Queen, to whom they declare the sad condition wherein both the King and Kingdom were then reduced, and that they saw no possible means, other then a Parliament, whereby to repair the State, relieve the King, and piece 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 Lord's being thus provided with her Majesty's Letters, repair to York, and presented them to the King, and upon consultation with the rest of the Lord's then attending his Majesty, five and twenty of them join in a Petition to that purpose: The Scots likewise, and 200 Gentlemen of the County of York concurring in the same suit 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 weighed 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 express 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 straits this Parliament took it's beginning, we may well say, by God's special providence, and by hers principally as the instrumental cause thereof, which soon after was it's greatest Enemy, and not by the Kings choice and inclination, as it is shamefully aver'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 anymore prohibited, by his own express charge to all of his Council of State, as that which he foresaw would be the only impediment to the accomplishment of all his arbitrary designs so merely brought to their ends, but the summer before he waged the first war against his native subjects the Scots, an enterprise which the World knows was the only Remora that checked and choked 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 suppress them, the mannagery whereof I shall now briefly present unto you.

The Parliament had its Summons from York (as all the Kingdom knows) and the third of November 1640. sat down at Westminster, where according to the usual 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 wholly 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 amiss 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 months after the Parliaments first sitting down, as with justice, honor, and his Coronation oath he was obliged, and in reference to his own profit he might very well have forborne, such tragical 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 work-masters of his former arbitrary projects, and on those which had fomented that unnecessary War against the Scots, as the Earl of Straf ford and the Arch-bishop (principally) the Prelates and dissolute Clergy, most of the Judges and the Farmers of the Customs, (not for common faults, but very high misdemeanors) the King to cross them, most ignobly and against the justice of the Kingdom, not only provoked, but openly shown himself both a defendor and protector of their Delinquencies, and upon the distaste he took on the commitment of Strafford, was instantly known to have laid sundry plots and practices, how he might dissolve the Parliament, or utterly to destroy it, which the Parliament perceiving, and that the Queen under color of accompanying the Princesse Mary into Holland, was sent thither with the Crown Jewels to buy Arms, and procure forces to be sent him, and Digby employed to the same purpose; whereupon in prevention of the storm 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 defense, and the militia deposited in such hands, as they might confide in, which he utterly refused to grant them as inseparables to the Crown (as he alleged) 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, always in reference to trust, & the public good & safety of the Kingdō; hence the contest by degrees grew to a separation, and in furtherance of the dispute, he also denied the house to disband the Irish Army, raised long before by Strafford, and composed 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 tells the King, you have an Army in IRELAND to reduce this Kingdom, when it was manifestly known to the world, that it never was in a greater calm of peace and quietness, and the universal 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 Kingdom of the charge of the Scotch Army, he first pressed 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, careful, and timely motion of the Kings) and thereupon bethought themselves, how first to disband and quit the Kingdom of the Scots until Mr. Stroude standing up, told the Speaker, That they ought not in such haste to depart with the Scotch Army, lest the sons of Zeruiah (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 pressed with Petitions of the Officers of his own Army fought their pay, and himself 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 needless and unnecessary molesting them, during the two Summers before, amounted in the total 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 Public 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 willful misgovernment, but then had it in agitation, how to improve his Revenues, and to enable him to live of himself without squeezing his Subjects, in honor, splendor 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 annual revenue to be settled upon him by act of Parliament, out of one particular, the Customs 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 willfulness of this King, after that he was gone 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 meddled with the Parliament about that business thenceforth, not to look him in the face; whence it evidently appears, that he meant not to take anything of the Parliament by way of gift, having it in design to take what he pleased, as power should enable him. God knows I send you no Fables, but shall willingly be accountable of anything which you shall find herein inserted, if it suit not with the naked truth and sincerity of him, who would not that yourself and so many of the English Nation should be any longer deluded and flamm'd with untruths, and nursed up in a belief of want of the Parliaments good and loyal intentions towards him, until he had willfully and desperately made himself uncapable of the love and loyalty of his people; and such was the ingratitude of this unhappy King, for proof whereof amongst many instances that I could present, and of his careless 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 show 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 gratify 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 kind I could relate, but to return 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 denied, unless an act might pass for the Parliaments sitting during pleasure; the Citizens well remembering the Kings wonted and sudden dissolving of all the Parliaments of his Reign.

The King then finding where the Remora lay, readily past that bill in relation to his own debt, which hath been since both by himself 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 designs, was chosen in so fit a conjuncture of time, as that he overtook the Scotch Army in their march before they past the borders, where what overtures he made to the Commanders to join 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 designs, posts to Edinburgh, where he very well understood, that to keep the Scots quiet, necessarily he should be compel'd to give that Parliament all the content they desired, as tis maifestly known he did in all things they demanded, and in many Acts of Grace, which to the English Parliament he utterly denied, and stood upon even to the last, as the Militia, the choice of their Admiral, Chancellor, Judges, &c.

During the Kings abode in Scotland, which was near upon four months, it is well known the Irish Rebellion brake forth in October 1641. and that rising authorised under the great Seal of Scotland, as both the Rebels themselves aver'd, and that attested by divers witnesses of credit, which had seen 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 until November following, when by order of the Houses they were all to re-assemble, in the mean time, whilst most of the Lord's and Commons were in the Country happened that Rebellion; the Parliament by this time and at their coming together, had to their old, a new work 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 Kingdoms, he had fore-laid the way to do it in Ireland, howsoever grossly palliated and denied in his Pourtracture, yet so suspicious of fowl play, as that on a right understanding of the mannagery of the peace, and the sly carrying on of the whole business, between himself and the Marquess 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 readiness 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 work with the Scots) comes to London, where at his first coming 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 work; and as to his reception in the City it was magnificent, and as it seemed very well pleasing to himself, 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 days had a new and another kind of game to play than that of merriment, 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 jealousy and affrighted at their assidual 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 return 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 favor which till then neither himself or his Father before him had never bestowed upon the vulgar (when (as it after appeared) his design was to make use of them, having in readiness, and shortly after filled 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 Lord's House, by one of his Serjeants at Arms, which being denied 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 Cavaliers, and entered into the House of Commons, sits down in the Speakers Chair, 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 vowed 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 sat 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 remain for their safety a longer space in the City, until 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 daily passing along by Whitehall Gates to their rescue in case the Cavaliers should have again disturbed their consultations, on this party the Cavaliers falls a beating them whereof some they killed, even at the Court gate, until 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 several visits into the City, where in a public audience be partly complains of the affronts done to him by the Parliament in their detaining the six Members, and partly excusing his unadvisedness in his entering 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 known to all the Kingdom, having as briefly as I could, deduced the story, from the third of November 1640. which was the very day that the Parliament sat down, to January 1641, near about the latter end whereof the King removed from Whitehall to Hampton-Court, Windsor, and Theobalds, accompanied with his wonted guard of Ruffians; the Parliament continuing still to petition him for his return, and concurrence with them; but no persuasions or arguments would prevail, but on he goes Northward, and makes his residence at York, whither he draws by degrees many of the Lord's 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 Traitor; thither also (notwithstanding the several 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 practices, and (as he conceived) his designs then grown to maturity, his next plot was to seize on the Town of Hull, by the Earl 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 Town of Newcastle by Colonel 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 thereof 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 threatened the universal Nation, and thereupon they suddenly dispatched the two Hothams with Commission to pre-possess the Town by the Trained Bands of those parts: here you may see the first arms that ever the Parliament appeared in, unless you shall urge the guards which the City sent them for securing their persons from the fury of the Cavaliers, which admit, it was only defensive, to preserve themselves and the Kingdom, 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 Kingdom, 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 work upon the Kings obstinacy, but that he was resolved to make War, 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 Countries, had they not done as they did. But as to the Kings part, please you to look over all the progress of his designs, and take them once more into your second consideration, and you cannot in any reason believe, but that from the very first commitment of the Earl of Strafford to the lower, whose escape he had privately 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 pressed (as a public example) to die, 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 Denmark, and Digby in the same errand, as also by his practicing of the Army in the North to fall upon the Parliament, together with the flight of Percy, Jermin, and Suckling, as the only persons first engaged in that Plot, which durst not stand to the Test, and in order to these, his peremptory denial to disband the Irish Army, and his private addresses to other foreign Princes and States to supply him with men, money, and arms, all which his practices were visibly known to the Kingdom, to have been in agitation some of them before the Earl of Straffords execution, other shortly thereupon, which evidently shows, that he was resolved at any rate, and by force of arms to suppress the Parliament. In the universal disturbance of the whole Kingdom, you may further observe, how in pursuance of his mischievous designs, notwithstanding the dislike the Parliament had of his determination to go 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 go, and the reasons thereof are perspicuous, considered as he made choice 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 work 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 terror to the rest, upon no other ground but on a vain surmise of his own making, of suspicion of Treason, where the proof is so plain by the first shedding of blood at his own doors, and the hostile manner of his entering the House attended with 300 armed men, and most of them of desperate and forlorn Fortunes, that the very bare denial that the King made not the first Ware doth surpass even impudence itself: I am not ignorant that the Kings many protestations, and not a few of them fortified with imprecations, hath taken a firm footing in the belief of many half-witted men, that his Cause was much better than it was, but the wiser sort make their judgments of men by their actions, not by their professions, and they believe by the testimony of their senses, what they see and feel they are bound to believe, especially when a King in his private indictments which are the dictates of the Soul, & those addrest to a person which had gained an absolute power over the faculties of his reason and understanding, such unbelievers are not fit for human society. But omitting repetitions and further Comments, we have left the King at York, where for your better satisfaction it is fit that I put you in remembrance how there he pursued the War, in raising the people, and inviting the Counties both far 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 forsook his own 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 anything, though never so relative to the safety of themselves and the Kingdom, 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 intolerable 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 Republic, 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 needless endeavor whereof, and to be more than stood with the constitution of the English Sovereignty, 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 sufficeth my Conscience that I live under it, in the enjoyment of somewhat wherewith to subsist, which I am sure was more than myself 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 enforced on the States by your only means, for the defense of the common freedom of the Nation, which as in the beginning of the late Wars, your party under the royal Commissions invaded, so you continually endeavor to subvert them, by all the secret plots and practices you possibly can invent, whereas could that malicious tumor of yours, and that unquietness of your spirits by allayed, and yourselves persuaded by reason, before it invades you, the taxes you may be sure on it, would soon be abated, why then can you not rest content with that change and government, which, were you not hood-winked, you might manifestly see God's high and over-ruling providence to have carried on the work 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 practices, even from the very beginning of the war to the present, which although they weigh not with you, as men bewitched, and as I may say, besotted with an incapacity or hardness of heart not to be convinced by any force of reason, or arguments, though providence it self visibly shows it out unto you, that not only God's special hand is in this great change of affairs, but that he hath yet some greater work depending on this, which in his own good time he will bring to pass, in throwing down that proud papal Monarchy, and utterly to confound that man of sin who sits in the temple exaulting himself above God.

Sir, Here may you be pleased to take in your more serious consideration by whom Kings reign, and cease to reign, and soberly to observe for what sins almighty God usually striks down the proud 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 God's 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 denied by himself) 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 backed 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 juggling fragments, the Regal Apology, the Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae; but especially in that grand imposture of the Kings Pourtracture; in all which, that they should give the plain lie to truth, conceal and smother the true intent of the laws 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 exclaim 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 loss of his Crown, and his dearest friends, so violently were his inclinations driven on to the accomplishing of his designs, when as neither the junctoes of France, Spain, Denmark, 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 own own him when they understood the ways and enterprises he most willfully undertook, and all of them (upon due examination) as unnecessarily undertaken, and needlessly 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 knows, they were most destructive, the misshapen, 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 enamored 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 reigned in blood and oppression, and handled the matter both with his friends and foes whether foreign or domestic; witness those needless Wars he engaged himself against Spayn and France in the entrance of his reign, afterwards with the Scots, but espetially with this Parliament and the subjects of three Kingdoms, not only to the beggering of them, but the ruin of himself and his posterity; and yet is this most willful and bloody 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 boldness to advise you, to take the right dimensions of all the Kings you have read of, either in the sacred scriptures or profane, observe well all their actings, and I dare be bold to say that you shall very rarely find any of them which have strictly tied themselves to the duty of their office or to have executed their powers otherwise than to the extreme 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 doubtless you shall find few of them which have been over-mindful 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, endeavored to enforce, 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 authentic 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 enjoined to those which lived under them, until for their injustice and extreme Tyranny God in his justice determined to transfer 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 Wilderness, and after in the Land of Canaan, for many hundred years together were no other than Ambulance Respublica, a walking Common-wealth, and only 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, until through their own wantonness 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 happiness (surfeiting as they did in the Wilderness 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 Aesop’s Frogs, they pressed 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 sons walk not in thy ways, but have turned aside after lucre, took bribes, and perverted judgment, (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 Neighbor Nations, and to have an illustrious and pompous domination over them; but how this pleased God that Chapter with others shows us in a very sad dialect; for, God in his wrath gave them a King according to their desires; yet he commands Samuel to show 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 show 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 battles; But how most of their Kings executed judgment, and what needless battles they fought for them, and how much blood of theirs was in many of their Kings reigns willfully and profusely spilled 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 fulfill the will and pleasure, and to maintain the pomp 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 Judah and Israel be not sufficient to inform your judgment of the oppressions and Tyrannies exercised by most of their Kings as a just judgment 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 choose 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 Uriah) 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 undeniable truth) especially where absolute Sovereignty is usurped by any one man, and that derived in a succession, which is the evil of all evils, and the very same which your malignant party so vehemently drives at, to introduce on the English Nation, and to enslave a free borne people, when yourself being a rational man, very well knows that no man ab origin 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 ordained of God to govern their people, otherwise than for their good, never to be oppressed and trampled on at their own wills and lustful pleasures: But happily you may here charge me to intrench, and press with the most on the Honor and Power of Kings, I answer, I honor them as God's 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 devour 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 yourself out of Deutronomy and Ezekiel, where you shall find the King to be tied up to strict rules, as to read the law, and to observe it all the days of his life, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren; and as the Prophet tells them, take away your exactions from my people, remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, &c.) Upon 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 plundering and desolating the Kingdom, which howsoever those exorbitances (amongst other of his faults) have been palliated with as much fineness 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 been yet vulgarly charged on his accompt; in the mean time remember our blessed Savior's oracle, That it is fit offenses 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 days at his own gates, and she which had the Honor 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 poor innocent sufferers speak in the same sad dialect, as having felt the fearful effects of the perversity of one man's will, who in the power of a moderate SOVERAIGNTY and the love of his people, by whom, and by this very Parliament (so hateful unto him) never any King of England was more honored, beloved, obeyed, and more courted; and when time was might have been what a just Prince would have desited; and should I ask you what might he not have been had he either at first, and long after this Parliament late down, yea and long after the War began complied 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 relied (as at first he promised) on his faithful Council the Parliament, I presume you will acknowledge it for a manifast truth, that none of his progenitors, were, or could have been greater it honor, power, wealth, and in reputation at home and abroad; but the truth was, so powerful a domination his inclinations had over any other reason than his own, that the ways of the Parliament (though never so relative to his own honor, justice, profit, and welfare of the Kingdom) were so averse and contrary to his genius, then rather to be controlled, or suffer any reformation to have been accomplished by them, either in the Church or State, and his disordered government to be regulgted by their advice, he would and did run the hazard of his own ruin, his Posterity and people. And as already I have shown you, tis a manifest truth that he tacitly had designed, many years before this Parliament sat down, not only to quit himself of this Parliament, but of all others, and as power should enable him, to invade the freedoms and liberties of the English Nation; howsoever in these particulars (amongst many other of his faults) it is far otherwise attested in divers of his expresses, as also protested in his late book (be it his own or not) the evidence of his own private letters, and the observations on them will clear that doubt; Where then, I beseech you tell me, should the subject have had any propriety, which by time and degrees would not have been swallowed up in that vast gulf of a prerogative royal, where into, not one year before the Parliament sat down, all that the subject had was in a fair way of ingulfing? neither wonder at this, for it is an infallible truth, that most Kings affect their own ends, and injustice, oppression, and commonly tyranny are faculties inherent to most of them, very seldom to look back to the proper ends for which they are ordained of God to advance the good and welfare of their subjects, but generally you shall find them only to seek the improvement of their own powers, & soveraignties, yea often times without any sensibility that their people are composed of the same flesh and blood as themselves, to make havoke of their lives and fortunes, sometimes to maintain their power, pride, prodigality, and luxury, and that which is worse, if worse may be, to fulfill their perverse wills and lustful pleasures in the beggering and slaughtering of millions of their subjects, for proof whereof, we need not go far for examples, the endeavors of our own Kings to enslave their subjects, yields us plenty of presidents, and the French to this day feel the yoke of slavery imposed on them by Lews th' eleventh in taking away their Conventio de le Estates, and reducing that Government to be at his own disposement; neither was Ferdinando of Spain quiet in mind, until he had quit himself of the Justice of Aragon, a Court not unlike the Ephori amongst the Lacedemonians, or our Parliaments in England and Scotland, which limited their Kings, and kept them within the bounds of moderation; the Hollanders also have had lamentable experience of the Ambition of Philip the second, who on the massacre of 100000 of the Natives endeavored to take away their ancient Immunities, and to invassalate the whole 17 Provinces under his absolute power; a strange passion in princes, when no power will content them, but that of absoluteness, to be masters over their Subjects lives and Fortunes; surely if there be any anallogy between Shepherds and Kings (as no doubt there is) our blessed Savior tells us, that bonus pastor ponit vitam pro ovibus, the good Shepherd, or King lays down his life for his people, and not to expose theirs to fulfill his own lustful pleasure; a sad and lamentable president whereof, we have all felt in our late King Charles.

But to proceed, I would fain know, what your aims are, that moves you with such impetuonsnesse to revile the present Government, since I cannot imagine what other cause you have, but in your endeavor to bring in the new Crown'd King of Scots on the old score, thereby to re-make yourselves in the unmaking and invassalating the rest of the English Nation, which duly considered as the posture of affairs with us now are, is so senseless (in reference to the bettering of the people's conditions) as that it exceedeth all the Chimaera's of the old Romances, and which you cannot expect may possibly be accomplished without the effusion of an infinity of more blood, and by the swords of the Scots and barbarous Irish (excellent cohabitants for the English (if you think on it) when as you know they are generally hated by both those Nations, though probable it is, that your imaginations prompt you to believe, that all of your party shall assuredly rise with them, though in the undoubted fall of the rest of the Nation; and not unlikely you flatter yourselves (out of the old remote potential hope) with the plunder of London, as the only magazine of wealth, that will make you all abundantly rich, though in this too you may miss of your aims, unless at an instant you can change your native dialect, and speak Scoth Presbytery and Irish Tanestry in a trice, neither ought you to believe that the Citizens will stand still whilst you cut their throats: But what a strange piece of poverty possesses your intellectualls, to believe that in such a change and turn of Fortune (as all of you so much desire) an English man (howsoever principled) shall long enjoy either life, liberty or estate, otherwise than at the discretion of the Conqueror; and when the King, either or both those Nations and other foreigners shall come in upon us and Lord it over us, in a far higher strain of Tyranny than ever the Danes exercised in that short time they were here masters over our Ancestors; If you foresee not this misery, and the fatal consequence which necessarily must follow such a turn of Fortune, I must leave you to your own will and expectancy, yet must I not forbear upon these considerations to commend unto your more serious thoughts, what kind and race of Princes w ^ch with such zeal you endeavor to bring in to govern over the English Nation, where I shall present you with a very formidable observation, as you may find it in the History of the Scottish Kings, and it is this, that seven, if not eight of the last Scottish Princes of the name and family of the Stuarts (one only excepted) came all to their ends by violent deaths (a fearful fate if you please to observe it) and some of them to make away one another; as for instance, James the first who for his Tyrannny was cut off by the Nobility, the second was slain at Roxborough, the third at Bonoxborn, the fourth at Plowden field, the last three in as needless quarrels as our late King Charts engaged first against his native Subjects the Scots, and on the heels of that War against the English and their Representative, only James the fifth had the fortune to die of a natural death, but as to his only Daughter Queen Mary and mother 〈◊〉 King James the sixth, it is manifestly known that she caused Henry Lord Darnley her second Husband to be cruelly murdered, and only to make way to her third Marriage with Earl Bothwell her Paramour, whom the States banished, and shortly after called her to accompt for her Husbands murder, and for that fact and other conspiracies against the State, by the Votes of the major part of the Peers and Commons in Parliament she was adjudged to die, whereupon she fled into England, where contriving sundry plots with the Papists and the Duke of Norfolk against Queen Elizabeth, and restless in her ambitious contrivements to dispossess the Queen Regnant of the Crown, you know to what end she came at Fodringay, where we may safely believe that God's just judgments overtook her, when she little dreamed to have died at the block; what since became of her only Son King James, and his two sons Prince Henry and our last King Charles? though the manner of the two first deaths are still held in dispute, yet we all know to what a fatal end the last came, even at his own Gates, and in the same place where the first blood was spilled by his own servants the Cavaliers; pardon me then, If I present you with an opinion of my own, which I am confident is an infallible verity, that almighty God in his justice suffers not any man to come to a prodigious end but for such sins by him committed, as are equivalent to that sin for which he suffered; it is God's own Oracle, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and he that kills by the Sword by the same weapon or the like he shall surely die; for a conclusion, take this as a known truth to all the Nation, that both the late Kings, as they were natural Scots, very rarely loved an English man, sure we are, not the Nation in general, and that very seldom either of them admitted any of the English into their Bed-chambers, (for generally they were all Scots) neither took they any of the English (Buckingham excepted) into their secrets, and as their privadoes, until Strafford was taken into our last Kings favor, but no otherwise than as a mere States-man and a bold instrument to act anything conducible his Masters designs, and such projects which were suitable to his endeavors and inclinations, otherwise I never knew any that were fit servants for him; and it is most certain, that both the Father and the Son laid more subtle and cunning snares to ensnare the English Nation, than all of the Norman race before them; the Father to have laid the foundation, and the Son to build up the whole fabric of absolute Sovereignty, as insensibly at first, and from the beginning of their reigns, as possibly their designs could permit, but King Charles towards his last, and long before the Wars began, openly, and shortly thereupon in hostility, and with mortar tempered with more English blood than ever hath been so willfully and profusely spilled by any one Tyrant in the World; and for what cause, and on what grounds (I beseech you tell me) more than for the Nug • and idle fictions of a divine prerogative, and to rule alone without other Law than his own Will, and without accompt to any but to God alone? they are both the Fathers and the Sons own Maxims, just Tyrant-like, quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem, and yet, which is the mystery and the wonder of the times, is this willful King cried up, by his many partizans, for the only paragon of Princes, and that which is of more admiration, his Protestations in the common belief preferred and credited before his visible actions, and Cabinet Letters, which if men were not besotted, I am sure best of all other evidences, lays open the most hidden secrets of the heart: But it is most certain, that before, and a long space after the battle at Edgehill, he refused all overtures of Peace, though tis confessed he made many motions for Peace to the Parliament, but ever no other than on such disadvantageous terms as were utterly unfit for the Parliaments embrasure, and the Kingdomrs security, for we find them evermore accompanied with such restrictions, reservations, and ambignous conditions (howsoever gilded over with plausible pretences) that the Parliament at length durst not either trust him, or any of his specious Declarations, as in the observations on the Reliquiae Carolinae are manifested, for it is most true, that as soon as he had attracted a very considerable Army to his assistance, by his artifices, and the several visits and the orations he made to the respective Sheriffs and Gentry (before and after the setting up of his Standerd) of the Counties of York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester, Chester, Stafford, Denby, Flint, Salop, Oxford, and Berks, wherein he neither spared any pains or travel, or lost a minute of time, both to deceive and win the people to his cause; and 'tis evident, that he had not only written his particular Letters to most of the prime Gentlemen of the Kingdom to side with him, but had sent his peremptory commands to most of the Colonels of the Parliaments Army sent into Ireland for the assistance of the distressed Protestants, to repair to his aid against the Parliament, a treachery and a testimony beyond all others of the falseness of his heart, considered (as hereafter it shall be made more apparent unto you) with the seeming zeal and care he pretended to bear to those poor Irish Protestants. It is worth your further observation, that this most unfortunate Prince, having so often accustomed himself to fraud and dissimulation, that it came at last to this sad issue, that all his after Messages and Overtures made to the Parliament (in the declination of his power, and after he was a Prisoner) though happily more really intended than formerly, and atested with exceeding specious & plausible Protestations, & some of them confirmed with his wonted Imprecations, were not believed, but suspected for fallacious; so long had this most unhappy King (like the Fly that plays with the flame, which comes in the end to burn himself out of his own fury) such power had his will and natural inclinations over his reason; where you may take an instance or two in the way for a proof thereof. When he first raised his Army at York, for which he endeavors to flam off the Parliament, that those forces were only raised as a guard for the security of his Person, and to confirm this, he caused divers of the Fugitive Lord's then attending him, shamefully to attest, that he had no intent thereby to levy War against the Parliament, when immediately thereupon he began to march, and to run from place to place as before is noted, to raise more force, and that which is most perfidious, after he had erected his Standard at Nottingham he continued the same strain, 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 only 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 own Expresses sent to the Parliament from Nottingham; and what a strange trick would he have put on the Parliament, when from York 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 believe his design to be real, when they perceived his drift was, First to raise here a considerable force, & then to join 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 yourself to read them, I shall therefore for the present conclude and refer you to the animadversions and observations on the contrarity between his public 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 tide of your belief, (hitherto poisoned with flams and such subterfuges) as may shame any rational man to be so long cosened and deluded by them. No more Sir at present but that I desire and wish you to believe no otherwise of that which I have sent you than in your judgment you shall find suitable to truth, and that as you shall see just cause, to esteem 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 several 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 public Observation.

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 design or plot laid (of I know not how many years standing) either of a factious party amongst them, to disturb 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 willful inclinations, the sins of the Nation, and God's special hand therein, as a fearful punishment upon us all: If you think otherwise, and that you shall persist in your errors, I doubt not but these Observations will more clearly manifest unto you, that the King was (in all this tragical 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 principal endeavor 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 yourself, and first to the