A Memorial Offered to John Williams
122. Another thing came so cross to the Bishop, as nothing could be worse to a magnificent sumptuous mind; and if he had been covetous, it had done the Work which his Enemy looked for, it had killed him. All that ever he had was seized, nay rifled, stormed, plundered; and what Enemy was ever so mad, to batter a Town when they had taken it? It was time for him to save somewhat, if he could, to keep him in a competency of Livelihood. He was in Debt some Thousand pounds deep, and he heard that the King was resolved not to abate a Denier of his Fine. No man was more willing to unlatch the Door, and to let out Wealth and Fortune if it would not stay. Si celeres quatit pennas, resigno quae dedit, & meâ virtute me involvo, Hor. Od. lib. 3. penult. Yet that he might not be stuck on Ground, he petition'd, that His Majesty would stall his Fine, and take it up as his Estate would bear it, by a Thousand Pounds a year; which was never denied to any Subject, and was granted, till the Archbishop overcame to have it revok'd. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Hom. Odyss. How much better had it been to do a good turn than a bad? But an Order is dispatched, to gather up all that could be found, and to import it into the Exchequer, without any respite of Time. Kilvert is commissioned to be the Publican, to go down to Bugden and Lincoln, with an Extent: And the Devil could do no worse to Job, when he was put into his Hands; he seizeth upon all the Books he found, Movables, Goods, Plate, Furniture, to the value of Ten thousand pounds, of which he never made account but of Eight hundred pounds, for the Thousand Marks allowed to Sir J. Mounson, which Kilvert 's Man told the Bishop, that Sir John and his Master shared it between them. He felled the Timber, which our new Purchasers of Bishops Lands learned of that honest man: He killed up the Deer of the Park; settles in Bugden -House for three Summers, with a Seraglia of Quaedam; fells an Organ that cost 120 l. at 10 l. Pictures that cost 400 l. at 5 l. Books he filcht what he would; and for four Cellars of Wine, Syder, Ale, Beer, with Wood, Hay, Corn, and the like, stored up for a year or two, he gave not account of Six-pence, but spent it upon Baggage, and loose Franions, as prodigally as if he had kept a Shrievalty. Thus a brave Personal Estate flew away into Atoms, and not a Tally struck to pay His Majesty, though enough to have paid all, if it had been justly husbanded. The worst is behind. The Bishop's Benefices, Lands, and Leases are offered to be rented at 4500 l. per annum, with sufficient Security to pay the King: This had satisfied the Fine in two years, within a little. But Kilvert brings a Letter with him from Secretary Windebank, to direct, or rather force, the Juries to receive no Evidence against the King's Profit, but to find the Particulars at half the rate, and less; which the Varlet enjoyed at those Penniworths, and made Benefit of the Overplus, to waste it in Luxury. Well might they allow the Bishop, at this rate, 500 l. per annum, out of his own, for his subsistence; and yet of that the Fees of the Prison sucked up a considerable proportion: But Kilvert was a long-tongu'd fellow, and if he were alive, he would speak out, and tell us, That there were Sharers with him in these Prizes, he had not all. He and Powel were Sequestrators indeed, to collect the Rents of Huntingdon shire, but Farmery had those of Lincoln, Sir J. Lamb the Parsonage of Walgrave, the first Dog that lodged the Deer; the Prebendaries of Westminster had his Deanry, that breathed him so well in the Royal Visitation; the Archbishop had the Jurisdiction of the Bishopric, against the Canon-Law, which in vacancy or suspension was to be executed by a Custos Spiritualitatis, who was to be one of the Residentiaries of the Minster. But thus he was given up to be devoured, as a Carrion, by his Promoters and Accusers. And what Conscience was there in the nomination of such partial Sequestrators? Nor were they ashamed that the Eyes of the whole Land were open, to see their Extortions: Tanta dulcedo est ex alienis fortunis praedandi, Liv. l. 1. dec. 6. Neither did they consider, that if they shall be cast upon God's left hand, that did not give charitably of their own, that their Condemnation shall be far greater, that did rob from others: Multi in hâc vitâ manducant, quod apud inferos digerunt, Aug. in Ps. 49. But to return to the much injured Prisoner, his Bark was pilled round about, the Stock then must needs die: Yet he kept honorable Hospitality in the Tower, and maintained a Table furnished for the Noon Meal (no Cloth was spread again that day) with as much Plenty and Decorum as any of the Prelates kept, that had all their Rents and Incomes to themselves; and yet this little Solace, to draw Friends about him, was repined at by the Archbishop; for Sir Richard Winn, the Bishop's Kinsman, knowing that he did sensibly decay by the Sums of Moneys which he had lent him, spake to Archbishop Laud, That some Order might be taken for a better administration of his Estate, that he might be fed and maintained like a Gentleman out of his own. His Grace gave him this snappish Answer, That he did not hear that his Kinsman lived like one that wanted. That's it then he would have heard. There were very good things to be found in the L. Archbishop, but his implacable spite against a Bishop, his Raiser, and now become a Spectacle of Pity, was unpardonable. Let him that weaves the Webb of his Life and Actions, untangle this Knot in the silken Skeen of his Memory, if he can. But I think, as Zenobius makes it an Adagy, Cent. 4. Prov. 28. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , That to draw the Picture of Butas truly, the best way was not to paint him from Head to Foot.
123. Malevolence did impotently break forth, and had no Vizard to hide its Face, that the Archbishop was not satisfied to have his Fellow Bishop suspended in the High-Commission Court, but he advanced to deprive him for the Book called The Holy Table. Gregory the Ninth in his Epistles blames the English Clergy above any, that they studied to undo one another: O Angli! hominum estis miserrimi: quilibet vestrum alium corrodit, ac studet depauperare. He saw too much into the nature of our insulary Severity, and not holding close together. Uniti muniti. They of the same Tribe, if they be wise, should not make a rent in their own piece, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , says the Emperor Antoninus, because they are woven into the same Loom, and are supporters of the same Building. Where should we look for kindness, but in the Rulers of the Church, the noblest part of Christ's Family? And kindness is nobleness, says St. Chrysostom; and mercy is a generous thing. The Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, Acts 17. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , says he. It doth not signify nobleness of blood, but gentleness of pity. Now for the Book, the Stone of Scandal, at which his Grace stumbled so much, it was known unto him, that some things got into practice in the Church under his Government, and by his Authority, were disrelisht by a considerable part in his Province, and they of the best conformity; whose averseness he thought would be the stiffer, by the contents of that Book. His remedy was to bring the Author into question, and to crush all that sided with him in his Person; as the State Maxim goes, Compendium est victoriae devincendorum hostium duces sustulisse, Paneg. to Constantine p. 339. But which way shall the Book be brought into Disgrace? with bad Interpretations? It will do no good. Forced Earth in time will fall to its own level. First then (besides some Answers published to decry it) he incensed his Majesty with a relation of it; in whose Ecclesiastical Rights it was mainly written: for what he had collected, and offered in a Paper to his Majesty, Lincoln got a sight of it by the Duke of Lennox, and proved that all the Matters of Fact set down against him were false, and not to be found in the Book, but that it strongly maintained the contrary Positions: which when his Majesty saw, he seemed to take it ill from the Informer. So these flitting Clouds were blown over, before they could pour down the Storm they were big with. His Grace sent the Book to the Attorney Gener • , to thrust it into an Information, who returned it back, that it would not bear it. Here again was Tencer 's luck in Homer. Il. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , He had a good will to hit Hector with an Arrow, but he mist him. Then in his Speech made against Burton, Prin, and Bastwick, which he printed with a Dedication to the King, he fell upon this Book, reading out of his Notes, that he that gave allowance to thrust it at that time into the Press, did countenance thoseth • ee Libellers, and did as much as in him lay to fire the Church and State. Now under color to Censure others, to fall upon a man that was neither Plaintiff, Defendant, nor Witness in their Cause, would amount to a Libel in another's mouth, against whom Justice had been open. But as Demosthenes says against Aristogiton, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a Sword is useless, if it have not an edge to cut; so this bitter flam was but a leaden Dagger, and did not wound. What remained next but, take him Bull-beggar, fetch him into the High-Commission Court, where his Grace was President Judge, and might be Advocate, Proctor, Promotor, or what he would. And he was so hot upon it, that three Letters were written by Secretary Windebank, in his Majesty's Name, to hasten the Cause. Whereas honest and learned Dr. Rive, the King's Advocate, knew not where to act his part upon it. Lincoln is now in his Coup in the Tower; whither four Bishops, and three Doctors of the Civil Laws came to take his Answer to a Book of Articles of four and twenty sheets of Paper on both sides. The Defendant refuseth to take an Oath on the Bible, claiming the Privilege of a Peer; but his Exception was not admitted. He stood upon it, that himself was a Commissioner, that they had no power over him, more than he had over them; which did not suffice him. Then they come to the Articles; whose Proem in usual form was, That he must acknowledge, and submit to the power of that high Court; which he did grant no otherwise, than in such things, and over such persons, as were specified in their Commission. The second Article contained, That all Books licensed by his Grace's Chaplains, are presumed to be Orthodox, and agreeable to sound and true Religion; which he denied, and wondered at the Impudency that had put such an Article upon him. The third, That he had licensed a Book, when none but the Archbishops, and Bishop of London had such power. Nay, says Lincoln, myself, and all Bishops as learned as they, have as much power as they; not only by the Council of Lateran under Leo the Tenth, and the Reformatio Cleri under Cardinal Pool, but by Queen Elizabeth' s Injunctions, and a Decree in Star-Chamber. The fourth, That he named a Book, called A Coal from the Altar, a Pamphlet. The fifth, That he said all Flesh in England had corrupted their ways. The sixth, That in a jear he said he had heard of a Mother Church, but never of a Mother Chapel. The seventh, That again in a scoff he derived the word Chapel from St. Martin 's Hood. The eighth, That he said the people were not to be lashed by every man's whip. The ninth, That he maintained the people were God's people, and the King's people, but not the Priest's People. The tenth, That be flouted at the pretty of the Times, and the good work in hand. The rest of the Cluster were like these, and these as sharp as any of the seven and twenty Articles, and one and thirty Additionals. This was the untemper'd Mortar that crumbled away; or as the Vulgar Latin reads it, Ezech. 13.10. Liniebant parietem luto absque paleis. So here was dirt enough; but not so much as a little straw, or chaff, to make it stick together: But such as they were, the Bishop had the favor to read them all over once before he was examined; a favor indeed, not show'n to everybody. After the Examination past over, he required a Copy of it, which the three Civilians voted to be granted: but his Grace, and Sir J. Lamb would first have him re-examined again upon the same Interrogatories, to try the steadiness of his memory, and to catch him in a Snare, if he did vary. An Error that may easily be slipped into, by the tediousness of the Matter, and the intricate Forms of the Clerk's Pen, wherein an aged or illiterate man will scarce avoid the danger of Perjury. But the Bishop, being of a prodigious memory, had every word by heart which he had deposed before against two subsequent Examinations; which laid this Cause asleep, till God shall awaken it, and hear it on both sides at the last day.
124. No worse could be looked for, than that their frivolous Articles should go out, as they did, in a Cracker. And less was expected from that which followed, whose steam, when it came abroad, was laughed at in good Company; but it cost the unfortunate Bishop some thousands in good earnest, for Cyphers, for Riddles, for Quibbles, for Nothing: It made a third Information in Star-Chamber; for like Herulus in Virgil, Aen. 8. Ter letho sternendus erat. The driver on, and the dealer in it was the Archbishop; and if all that read it, do not condemn it, I am not in my Senses. For I will Appeal in those words of Job, c. 17. v. 8. Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite. Mark how the Game was plaid by a black Bishop and two Rooks, and how the white Bishop was taken by discovery. Dr. Walker, our Bishop's Secretary, hardly escaped in the second Bill, and Kilvert 's anger did still hang over him. Cadwallader Powel his Steward was then fined at 300 l. and Imprisonment, yet was never touched in his person, nor a penny of the Fine exacted of him. For which Favors he is dealt with to espy what he could, to crush his Lord with some fresh Oppression. Who raking in every Corner to find out somewhat that might answer his Undertaking, he produceth two Letters of Mr. Osbolstons, the head School-master of the King's School at Westminster. The Bishop, to whom they are written, will not own them, that he did ever receive them. Powel says he found them in his Chamber. And it is possible there was such heedlessness; for I knew the House well, and have seen some careless oversights in that kind. A fault incident to Melanctthon, says Camerarius in vit. p. 37. Litterae quae afferebantur, quotidie omnium oculis & manibus expositae, ex quibus subtractum plurimum esse constat. A negligence not to be covered with the excuse of the greatest and gravest studies. But it was made highly probable, that these Letters were neither found, scattered at random, nor pickit out of a Desk or Hamper of Papers, (both which for certain Powel broke open) but Powel received them immediately from the Carrier, and never delivered them to his Lord and Master. So it was confirmed by many Oaths in Court; nay, confessed by Powel, That when his Lord was in remoter parts, he had order to open all Letters directed to his Lordship, to look into them if they had any matter concerning the Suits so hotly prosecuted against him, and to send them, as he thought fit, to the Secretary to London. The Contents of these two Letters being glost upon by Powel to be dangerous to the Archbishop, and lap'd up in dark folds to give a greater affright, it founds likely that he reserved them to himself, and kept them in lavender for such a day wherein they might stand him instead. For more confirmation, the Bishop takes his Oath, He did not remember that ever he received such Letters: and Osbolston swears point blank, He never had an answer to them; which makes a strong presumption, that this trusty Steward did pocket them up. Of whom Kilvert received them; which is not denied. And he presents them to his Grace: and if his Grace had been the Master of a brave Spirit, we would have thrown them into the sire. That had been generous to abhor a Servant that betrayed his Master, and to borrow no Office of Villany from him. That had been noble, not to rake for Secrets and Advantages in the Letters of his Adversary. So did Caesar when Scipio 's Cabinet was brought to him, found at Thapsus; so he did with Pompey 's Papers seized on at Pharsalia, which he would not look into, but burnt them. Illa suit vera & incomparabilis animi sublimitas, captis apud Pharsaliam Pompeii magni sertniis Epistolarum, concremasse ease optima 〈◊〉 , a • que non legisse. Plin. lib. 7. Nat. Hist. c. 15. Such Gallantry had better become a Primate of all England, than the Dictator of Rome, and all the World. This had been: way to have got him a great Name, to give Lincoln such an Eslay of his Civility. Nihil laudabilius, nihil magno & praeclaro viro dignius 〈◊〉 & clem • ntiâ, Tul. 2. l. Of. But to look for such things from a revengful mind, is as unlikely as to make the bris • lie skin of a Hedghog smooth. And when all the Stuff in the Letters are scann'd, what Fadoodles are brought to light? First, Osbolston is charged to write libellous matter against his Grace, in That he called him Vermin, little Urchin, meddling Hocas Pocas; and the Lord Treasurer deceased, Great Leviathan. 2. To contain false News and tales in this passage, That the little Urchin, and great Leviathan, are become at great distance in earnest. 3. To contain a Conspiracy to destroy his Grace, because one Letter enquires, when Lincoln would come to Westminster to look after this Gear. On the Bishop's part, a Note scribled hastily, but no Letter, is produced, sent to Walker in these Words:
What a Spider's Thread is here to pull a Man into the Star Chamber by it • So Fulgentius tells us of Padre Paulo, that he wrote a Letter in Cypher to Gabriel Collison, touching at the Court of Rome, as if some came to Dignities by evil Services; which Collison revealed to St. Severmo, Cardinal, and Head of the Office of Inquisition, for which Paul was trounced with continual disturbance. And our Inquisitor St. Severo, did now make use of the like, or rather less opportunity.
125. To slide this Cause with the most sly advantage into a hearing, Lincoln is kept in close Imprisonment from All-hollantide till the end of Christmas (for what Cause will appear in order) that he might be surprised, and neither trouble the King with Petitions, nor the Court of Star-Chamber with motions. He chaft at it extremely, and could do no less. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , says Aristotle Eth. 4. c. 5. They that are not angry upon meet occasion, are Foo's. But the day is set, and come, without any respect had to his due preparation, according to Rules and Customs. At the hearing Mr. Osbolston pleads, That the great Prelate had no reason to take those nick-names to himself; that he neither named him nor thought of him. He swears it, and proves it strongly, That the Hocas Pocas was one Dr. Spicer, who was vulgarly abused with that by-word, and that Judge Richardson was the great Leviathan, who had committed Spicer at that time, no less than five years before, to Newgate. What reason was there but he should expound his own Riddle? Now here's a forked Dilemma, let the Bishop, or any man living, escape one horn of it, if it be possible. For if he receive such Letters, and not complain of them, if it come to light, distortions of Phrases shall endanger him to be guilty of smothering a Libel. If he take the other course, and reveal them to a Justice of Peace, and say he takes the Arch-bishop to be meant by Vermin, Urchin, Hocas Pocas, since the Writer did swear the contrary, he had evidently made himself the Author of a libellous Exposition. But the Bishop pleads he never received such Letters to his remembrance; and to make it likely, Osbolston swears he never had an Answer of them. Powel will not swear, but says he found them in a Band-box in the Bishop's Chamber. They were like the Cup in Benjamin 's Sack, nobody but Joseph and the Steward that plotted it, could tell how it came there. Dr. Walker believes, but dares not swear, that his Lordship received them; yet adds, he could not be assured that he understood them: for upon his knowledge the Bishop was often to seek to understand Mr. Osbalston 's gibrish, and was fain to send to him for his Cypher, which in this matter he did not. That which the King's Counsel urged was from the Papers that Dr. Walker brought in under his Lord's hand, which tuned somewhat like to a Replication to the two Letters. The Secretary was pelted with many hard words that day from divers Lord's, for doing that ill O • lice to his Master. I have heard Dr. Walker protest deeply, so have many besides, That he would not have done it for all the world, but that he knew it was a main witness of his Lord's Innocency, and enough to clear him, howsoever the Court did strangely misunderstand it. I am bountiful to him, if I think he did it for that good end; and I will think so, because I never saw any immorality or vice in the course of his life. And he was right, that the Paper is very candid, and did deserve from the Archbishop that he should have cast away at least some unprofitable courtesies upon the Bishop for it. And the proof was clear, even ex parte Reg is in the Court, that he refused to consent or agree to make one in a quarrel against the Archbishop: but he holds close to his main Plea, That the Letters excepted at did never come to his hands. If the matter of them be worthy of a censure, let it light upon his Steward, and his Secretary, who confess to have seen those Papers some years before, and to know the ironical meaning, and did conceal them. He appeals also to the Laws of the Land, that if such Letters had come to him, like Merlin 's Rhimes, and Rosicrusian bumbast, that no Law or Practice directs the Subject to bring such Gryphes and Oracles, but plain, literal, grammatical Notions of Libels to a Justice of Peace, against a known and clearly decipher'd Magistrate. That nothing were more ridiculous, than to prefer a Complaint for canting, and unintelligible Expressions. It cannot be but so many wise Lord's, as sat in Judgment, understood this. Well might the Bishop say, that all flesh had corrupted their way. The Court in those days was rolled about with fear, and were steered by imperious directions. As Syncsius said of Athens in his days, Ep. 235. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , There was nothing but the Hide left, to show what a fair Creature it was in times of Yore. Let it not be thought rash to write thus of so noble a Senate How did a Commission of Lord's use Queen Ann of Boleyn? and a greater Commission than that use Mary Queen of Scotland? But Mr. Osbalston is sentenced out of all his Freehold, was doomed to an opprobrious branding, who escapit it by concealing himself from the cruelty of the Tiger; only the Earl of Holland voted, that he saw no proof to bear a Sentence; but cleared both Osbolston and the Bishop; so did not the Lord Finch, and Sir Fr. Windebank, who listed up the Bishop's Fine to Ten thousand pounds: Such as these made that Honorable Court insupportable to the Subject, odious to the Parliament: For whose sake I will change a word in a passage of Tullius Philip. 13. Ist is locus si in hâc Curiâ fuerit, ipsi Curiae non erit locus. Sir J. Brampston, Lord Chief Justice, led the most Voices for 8000 l. Fine and Damages, for receiving Libellous Letters. Yet was so judicious not to call the Script, sent privately to Dr. Walker, a divulging of them, as some others did; nor did he tax him for not blaming the Indiscretions of Osbolston: yet those were the Heads to which the most did refer the Contents of their dislike. For all this the Bishop rested in peace of mind, and piously wishit his Judges Mercy from God; which Prayer I hope was heard for their persons; but God was offended at the Court, which over-dripit so many with its too far spreading Branches of Arbitrary and Irregular Power. If the Excrescencies had been pruned away, the rest might have served for wholesome use. When the Romans found the Carriage of their Censors to be insolent, Mucronem sensorium mustis remediis retuderant, Alex • ab Alex. lib. 3. c. 23. They blunted the Edge, but still kept the Sword in the Magistrates hand. But God spared not to dig up this burdensome Tree by the root; as Auson. in Paneg. Quae mala adimis, prospicis ne esse possint rediviva; yet it may be the Stump is in the Earth, though fettered to be kept under with a band of Iron and Brass, Dan. 4.15. and may spring again in due season. But this guilt, among a hundred more upon it, is, that this Bishop being mulcted in eight thousand pounds, for a pretence thinner than a Vapour, a Trespass to mean for one Christian to ask forgiveness of it from another, and never clapit upon him by the Evidence of any Proof, yet not a doit was remitted of that vast Sum. And yet I look upon our Bishop as one that had a better hold in present comfort, hope hereafter, and glory forever. For it is better by far to suffer, than to do an Injury. Miserior est qui suscepit in se scelus, quàm qui alterius facinus subire cogitur. Cic. Philip. 11.
126. Lucilius a Centurion in Tacitus Annal. lib. 1. had a scornful name given him by the Military Dicacity of his own Company, Cedo alteram. Quta fractâ vite in terga militis alteram, & rursus alteram poscebat; when he had broken a Bastonada of a tough Vine upon a Soldiers shouldiers, he called for another, and another after that. Such an inde • inent Cruelty was exercised upon the person of this suffering Bishop: when one Bill was heard and censured, Cedo alteram, & rursus alteram, was all the pity that he sound. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Hesiod. lib. 5. Fortune is not content with some men's miseries, unless they be all over miserable. A new Information is brought on with as much fury, as if Jehu had marchit with it; and that the Desendant might be utterly ignorant of a Conspiracy that was hatching abroad, he was shut up close, upon color that he was obstinate, and had not answered to some Interrogatories as was expected. They were Eighty in all. To which the Bishop doth thus remonstrate for himself. That when a Defendant is examined upon Interrogatories in the Court, and certified by a Judge to have answered insufficiently, he is to pay twenty shillings costs the first time, and to be re-examined. If he be reported to fail the second time, to pay forty shillings Costs. The third time to be imprisoned; but never in close Imprisonment. These were ever the constant Rules of the ancient Lord's that sat upon those Causes. The Bishop being called to answer to these Eighty Interrogatories, his Answers are certified to be imperfect to forty of them. But the Judges did not point out wherein the Imperfection lay, as it ought to be done. But the Defendant is left in a mist, and knows not how to direct his course to please them Yet goes them over again, and answers so fully the second time, that the Examiner thought his part was done; and himself protests, if he failed in anything, it was for want of direction from the Judges. All that he had done, and he had done to his best, is not allowed; his Answers are again returned to be insufficient, yet not challenged in a word for such and such Omissions, or Tergiversations: for which an Amercement of 40 s. was the most that could be exacted by Rule. That's all one; he is committed close Prisoner to his Chamber, with order that neither Counselor or Solicitor should come near him, or send to him. The first night of his close restraint he perfected his Answer the third time, to his best Abilities. The Judges, Jones and Berkeley are so awed, that they refuse to certify the sufficiency of this Answer, till Kilvert will acknowledge it to be complete. So he continued in a melancholy Retirement from Allhollantide till the end of Christmas; and then he finds a new Charge, or rather no new one, but the After-birth of the second Cause, heard and censured before about Tampering: A Course against the Fundamentals of Justice, as Budaeus Tom. 2. in Pandec. fol. 17. Senatus censuit ne quis ob idem crimen pluribus legibus reus fieret. But in this latter Bill the Mystery of Mischief broke out by God's wondrous work, and the detection of some Friends, whom the Bishop had never solicited to look after it. Thus it runs; Cad. Powel, George Walker, T. Lund, W. Wetherall in this new Charge are made Co-defendants with the Bishop: these all were partly sentenced, partly in durance before, and must do some Service for their Freedom and Indemnity, also with expectation of Reward: that is, they must courageously accuse themselves in their Examination, that they may be more forcible Witnesses against the Bishop; but shall be as so many Coy-duks, to cry a little in the ears of the World, until the great Mallard be catchit in the Coy; themselves then to be set free, and to be fed with good Corn. The particulars of this Bill are branchit into Ten Heads: For the greatest part, they consisted of old matter, That he had dictated Answers to Witnesses, taught them cunning Evasions, sent some Witnesses out of the way; with addition, that he had made Conveyances of his Lands and Leases, to prevent the levying of the King's Fine. Nay lastly, to sill it up, that he did not allow competent Means to a Vicar, from the Prebend of Asgaby. I would their Lordships had sat upon such Reformations for seven years together, if it did belong to their cognizance. What a Task had the poor Bishop to fence with his Adversaries at all these Weapons? As Isocrates extolls Evagoras, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , He was Master but of one City, and no more, when he waged War with all Asia: But our forlorn Defendant had no shelter left under Heaven but a Prison, wherein he was mured, to encounter Perjuries, Conspiracies, Malice, Kilvert, with all his Party, and all the Rulers in high places that backit him: only that promise of Christ remained good, Matth. 10.19. Dabitur in illa horâ: It shall be given you in that same hour what to speak. And it did not fail him.
127. First he demurs, and pleads, That five Charges chained together in this Information had been heard before, and censured in the Charge upon Tampering with Witnesses. To bring the same Fault again to trial, that had been once punishit, is contrary to the Justice of God, and exceeds the cruelty of the worst men. The Lord Popham' s Rules were famous, and registered in the Court, That bounds should be set to the process of Causes, that they might not be infinite. If a fourth Bill be admitted to survey the management of a former Defense, then a fifth may start up in the management of the fourth, a sixth upon the fifth, and prosecutions will be endless. Then he produceth his main defense, That he could prove that T. Lund and W. Wetherall were drawn by Kilvert, with divers indirect means of Terrors and Promises, to accuse themselves, to have had under hand dealings with the Defendant, to teach them to shift direct Answers, and to evade Interrogatories with Collusions: That they had assurance given them, when the Bishop was wounded through their sides, their wounds should be healed, their fines remited, and their good service gratified. The Bishop had this Confession of Lund and Wetherall, under the hands of credible Gentlemen, who smelling that Villany, had conferred with them, and galled them with suspicions, that they might thrust themselves into the Briars, and be forsaken by Kilvert, who was very false. And what if he should drop away? which might be looked for from a man of his daily Surfeits. And let him do his best, when they had confessed Perjury against themselves with their own mouth, he could never solder up their cracked Credit, but the disgrace would cleave to them, and render them despicable as long as they lived. Which Terrors being spread before these Men, they exclaim that they were circumvented, and undone forever. This being inferred into the Bishop's Defense, his Counsel came twice to the Bar to move for a Hearing, and were put off. His well willers, which droopt before, had a strong opinion of a good Issue. So often we see, there is life in an Apoplectick, though he seem to be dead. Kilvert curseth his Fortune, that his Spells are disinchanted: Et fragile • quaer • ns illidere dentem—Insreg • solido. Horace. The Bishop's Innocency was not so brittle, as he thought to be torn in sunder: but the Solidity of it did break his Teeth. Howsoever Kilvert is grown gracious, for his good parts I wiss, and must not be forsaken in this plung • . But upon a reference, all this matter about Lund and Witherall is expung'd, as scandalous to Kilvert 's good name. Scandalous to his good name! Non entis nulla sunt attributa. Nay, but give us andience, says the Bishop's Counsel; Is not all this necessary to our Clients Defense? That cannot be denied, say the Judges Brampston and Berkeley; it is the very body of his defense; but reproachful to the Man that prosecutes for the King: and so it was appointed to be taken out. When this expunging was confirmed, and the Attorney General had made his Replication upon the Demur, the Bishop knowing not how to wear the Yoke of a base Spirit any longer, and full of the Courage that God had inspired into him, Appeals from these intolerable Grievances to the High Court of Parliament in this Rejoinder: That the Defendant doth and will 〈◊〉 , maintain, and justify his Answers, and all the matters and things therein contained to be true, and certain, and sufficient in the Law. And that nothing thereof ought to be expunged, which is necessary and pertinent to his Defense. And in case any part so pertinent and necessary for his Defense, under color of scandal to a third person (who may clear his Credit if he be innocent, and be repaired with Costs) be expunged, and he and all others in the like case be left remediless in the Law; The Defendant having no other Remedy left in a Defense against a Suit commenced against him in the King's Name, doth humbly Appeal unto the High Court of Parliament, when it shall be next Assembled, humbly protesting against any Sentence, as void and null, which shall pass against him in the mean time, for and because of the want of his just and necessary defense so taken away and expunged. Much was added in this Appeal to defy Kilvert, who had boasted to prosecute the Bishop to his degradation; and the Bishop in the said Appeal disavows, that the Court of Star-chamber had ever degraded, or appointed to be degraded, or ever will degrade, or appoint to be degraded, any Bishop, or other Lord and Peer of the Parliament, or take away their Freehold in point of Means, Profit, or Honor, &c. This Appeal was filed in the Office, entered in the Clerks Books, and Copies thereof were signed by the usual Officer; although Sir William Pennyman, Clerk of the Star-chamber, took it off the File, and blotted it out of the Books. Sir William was ever of a laudable behavior, but durst not say them nay that thrust him upon this Rashness. Who did not gaze at this Appeal, as if it had been a Blazing-star? Who did not discourse of it? How did they, who club together for News and trial of their Wits, spend their Judgments upon it? Some thought, that excess of Wrongs done to the Bishop had distempered him, to fall upon a course of Confusion to himself. In plain words, being bitten by so many mad Dogs, they thought he bit again, as if he had been mad: Whereas he never did anything with a more sober mind. Insanire me • iunt, ultro cum ipsi insaniant, Plaut. in Menaech. Some replied, Let the danger be what it will, the President tended to a Public Good: Audendum est aliquid singulis, aut pereundum universis: For are we not all Passengers, as well as he, in the same bottom? And may we not be swallowed up in the same Shipwrack, if our Pilots look no better to their Duty? They that were acquainted with the best Pleaders, thought to have most Light from them, and asked if the Act did not exceed the Duty of a Subject. And would it not leave the Author to the fury of the Court, to be torn in pieces with a Censure? Nay surely, said the Gown-men, there is no violation of Duty to His Majesty, in appealing to his Parliament, for he submits to the King, who is the Head of the Body. Or, at the most, it is Provocatio à Philippo dormiente ad Philippum vigilantem, from K. Charles, misinformed in Star-chamber, to K. Charles, among his best Assistants, the three States of the Nation: And for the minacy of a Censure, do if they dare. A Parliament will repair him, when it sits, and canonize their own Martyr. Both they that liked and dislik'd the Appeal, confessed, that the corruption of his Judges compel'd him to it. Should Kilvert, notoriously detected, be suffered to escape, by cancelling all that brought his Conspiracies to light? Infixo aculeo fugere, in the Adagy? Strike in his Sting, and fly away like a Wasp! Suffer this, and at this one dealing of the Game the Bishop's whole state had been lost, of Fortunes, Liberty, and Honor: Ne{que} enim levia aut ludicra petuntur—Praemia, sed Turni de vitâ & sanguine certant. Discretion was to give place to Courage in this case: Baronius tells us of Theodoret. ann. 446. n. 27. That being incensed at the Tyranny of a Shark in Office, that had seized upon all he had, Uranius Bishop of Emesa, advised him to make no words of it, but to sit still by the loss: Theodoret answers him bravely, Non solùm prudentia, sed & fortitudo virtus est; Fortitude is a Virtue as well as Prudence, and is as laudable in her own turn and occasion. Put the case to a Physician, when he thinks there is no hope of a Patient, what will he do? The ancient Rule was, Nescio an in extremis aliquid tentare medicina sit: certe nihil tentare perditio est. To give the sick man Physic is against Art, but to give him nothing is to cast him away willfully. Here is Lincoln 's condition, who being denied the Justice of that Court, had nothing to fly to in that Extremity, but this Appeal, with which he did so hough the Sinews of the Bill, that from that day forward it never hopt after him.
128. Because some did not stick to say, that the Bishop might thank himself for his incessant Troubles, that he did not take Conditions of Peace, that were offered to him, it must be presented here, that Conditions indeed were tendered, such as Naash offered the Israelites, to thrust out their right Eyes, 1 Sam. 11.2. or as the Samnites released Sp. Posthumious, and a Roman Legion overthrown at Caudis. with slavish Ignominy. But these were worse: Ultra Caudinas speravit vulnera furcas, Luca. lib. 2. The Bishop lying in Prison, and sustaining the heavy weight of the first Censure, July 11. 1637. he pressed the L. Coventry to move His Majesty for some mitigation of the Fine, and to stop the violent levying of it, since it stood in no proportion with the Charges of the Bill, or the Presidents of the Court. Hereupon His Majesty tells the L. Keeper, he would admit of no such motion, but by the Mediation of the Queen. The Bishop is glad of the News, and could call to mind, that in greater matters than this, Princely Ladies had the Honor to make the Accord, which the greatest Statesmen had attempted in vain; as Madam Lovise, Mother of K. Francis the First, and Madam Margaret, Aunt to Charles the Fifth, Regent of the Low Countries, made up that Peace between the Emperor and the King, which other Mediators had given over for desperate. Our Queen endeavor'd a Message of Clemency, but that Honor was denied her. The Earl of Dorset writes in her Name to the Bishop, That all she could obtain of the King, was, that if he would be bandied no more in Star-chamber, 1. He must leave his Bishopric and Deanry, and all his Commendams, and take a Bishopric in Ireland or Wales, as His Majesty pleased. 2. He must recant his Book. 3. Secure all his Fine. 4. Never question any that had been employed by His Majesty against him. Strange Physic as ever was prescribed, for it was a Pill as big as a Pumpion; and whose Throat could swallow it down? Non est pax, sed servitutis pactio, Tul. Philip. 12. The worst that all the Courts in England could do, could not impose such Terms upon him: Beside, to yield thus far were to fly the Field, and to receive an inglorious wound in his Back. Then he falls upon other Thoughts, that he would please the King, by making an unparalleled Submission to him: And were it not best to be content with half a Ruin, to prevent a whole? He must be a loser; yet a man spends nothing, that buys that he hath need of. So he wrote back to the same Earl, that he would lay his Bishopric and Deanry at His Majesty's Feet, but excused his going into Ireland. To the second, That he could not recant his Book, which contained no Doctrine that he was not ready to justify. To the third, He would pay his Fine as he was able. To the fourth he submitted. Not this, not all this was accepted: The very L. Drusus, in Paterculus, Meliore in omnia ingenio animo{que} quàm fortunà usus; His noble Wit, and good Parts were still destituted by Fortune. He received this Return from the Earl; That His Majesty was not contented to receive his Bishopric and Deanry from him, his Residency in Lincoln, and Rectory of Walgrave, are required to be voided, and to Ireland, or no Peace. To the second, No Doctrine should be recanted, but Matters of Fact, &c. The Bishop wonders at this, who looked for Praise, that he had stoop'd so low; yet rather than contest with his Sovereign, he resolves with David, Adhuc ero vilior: And the common Rule of Polybius was observed by all men, lib. 5. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Of two good things, choose the greatest; of two Evils, choose the least. He offers to resign all he hath in the Church of England, but still will live in England; for the Book he pleaded so well for it, that the King was satisfied with a conditional submission, as, If anything contained in it offended His Majesty, he was sorry. But to the third, about the Fine, he found very imperfect and unsolid Proposals, and No Ground that's good is hollow. Since he must be stripped of all that he had in the Church, he would know how much should be left him of his Lands and Leases to live upon, that the King's Fine-gatherers might not snatch up all: And he craves an Answer, whether that Pension of 2000 Marks per ann. bought of the E. of Banbury, by His Majesty's Direction, and for his Service and Profit, being then Prince of Wales, and 24000 l. in Ar • ears for the same, should be considered towards the King's Payment. The Rejoinder began at the latter Clause, That Pensions are not paid to men in disfavour, the E. of Bristol being the Example for it. For the Proportion what he should have to live upon rising out of his own Estate, he must know nothing, till he had wholly submitted. From that hour the false Glass, wherein the Bishop saw a shadow of Peace, was broken: And he writes to the Earl in the Style of a man, That it were a tempting of God to part with all he had willingly, and leave himself no assurance of a Livelihood: That his Debts, if he came out of the Prison of the Tower, would cast him into another Prison, no better provision being made for them, than he saw appearance for: That he would never hazard himself into a condition to beg his Bread. Truly he had cause to look for better Offers, and since they came not, he would lay his Head upon the Pillow of Hope, till he had slept his last: He had not suffered as an Evil man, his Conscience bore him witness, whereby he was not obnoxious to Infamy: Majore poenâ affectus quàm legibus statutum est, non est infamis; a Maxim of Reason and of Law in our Kingdom. To surrender up all he had, were to suffer as a Fool. Plato is made the Author of the Saying, That he had rather leave somewhat to his Enemies when he died, than stand in need of his Friends, who might prove no Friends while he lived. But this is surely Plato 's in Apol. pro Socr. That when Socrates was asked, how he felt himself affected, when he was wrongfully condemned, he said, he could give no Answer till he met with Palamedes and Ajax; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : till he had asked them how they took the Sentence of unrighteous Judges, he was not fully provided to satisfy them. Our bishop consulted day and night at his Study with Histories of Saints in by-past Ages, and knew they had suffered more than he had done, and was sorry for his human frailty, if they could bear it better. Now, I am confident that the Prudent will collect, that this Bishop was never deaf to Conditions of Agreement, and that no man living could offer a greater Sacrifice than he did for a Peace-Offering, unless he would have stripped himself of all, and not have left off his own two Mites, in all the World, to cast into the Corban.
129. But if the Parly for Peace were nothing but Thunder and Thunder-bolt, how will the Bishop endure it, when it comes to strokes? God be praised, his Warfare in these Causes was at an end: Flebile principium melior fortuna secuta est, Metam. lib. 7. The Chamber of Horror, and its Star, did not shine malignantly upon him again; A time, and times, and half a time, had passed over, and these things were finished, Dan. 12.7. For three year and half he continued in the Tower, and in that space lived as if he had drank of Homer 's Cup, Odyss. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; as if he had represented and not felt the part he acted: For except that so many Suits interrupted his Studies, he lack'd nothing that could be perceived, of Health, Solace, and Alacrity: Bene dormit qui non sentit quàm male dormiat, a Fragment of Publius Mimus. He wanted not good Society, for I must ever praise his constant Friend Dr. Alabaster, who took up a Lodging in one of the Mint-master's Houses, to be with him continually. While he was so many months shut up from the action of the World, he began to hear of some Occurrences abroad, which made him not dread his chief Enemy at Lambeth at all. The Archbishop had entangled himself in his own Webb, nay, the King, and all England and Scotland with him. In illa liturgiâ infelicissime ad Scotos missâ, says wise Mr. Selden, de Syn. Jud. par. 2. His Majesty's Expedition into the North gave our Bishop a breathing time from his Troubles: And when the Articles of Pacification, made at Berwick, were burnt in London, (true or uncorrupted, I dispute not) I that report this, was the first that carried the Tidings to the Tower, and I call God to witness, the Bishop presently broke out into these words: I am right sorry for the King, who is like to be forsaken by his Subjects at home, but far more by all Kings and Princes abroad, who do not love him: But for the Archbishop, says he, he had best not meddle with me, for all the Friends he can make, will be too few to save himself. A fatal fore-sight of all impending and ensuing Mischiefs! But do you not hope, Sir, said I, that such Concussions as you fear to come to pass will give you your Peace and Liberty? Possibly they will, says he. But no honest man shall be the better for a Scotch Reformation, wherein the Hare-brains among us are engaged with them. Which is like that of Rutilius deported in Banishment to Mytelene; one comforted him with hope of Civil Wars, and then all that were banished should return to Rome; says Rutilius, Quid tibi mali feci, ut mibi pejorem reditum quàm exitum sperares? That which did precipitate the common Fortune, and made all things worse and worse, was the King's very sudden dissolving the Parliament met in Apr. 1640. His Majesty had been forewarned by a worthy Counselor, and a dying man, against that Error in the Christmas before, Cujus mortem, dolor omnium celebrem fecit, Sym. Ep. p. 11. It was L. Keeper Coventry, who made but one Request with his last Breath to the King, and sent it by Mr. James Maxwel, of the Bed-Chamber, That His Majesty would take all Distasts from the Parliament summoned against April, with patience, and suffer it to sit without an unkind dissolution. But the Barking of the living Dogs was sooner heard than the Groaning of a dying Lyon; for that Parliament ended in a few days, in its Infancy, and in its Innocency, but the Grief for it will never end. The next came on Novemb. 3. with all Animosities that could be infused out of Scotch and English Distempers. The Bishop of Lincoln Petitions the King, by the Queens Mediation, that he might be set at liberty, and have his Writ, as a Peer, to sit in Parliament; which was opposed by the L. Finch, then Custos sigilli magni, and Archbishop Laud, as appears by a Letter written to Sir Richard Winn, Octob. 3. in these words.
130.
Good Cousin,
WITH my hearty Thanks remembered for all your great, however unfortunate, care of me, and my Affairs: Though you would not let me know anything that might be any Grief or Discomfort to me yet I hear it of other Hands; That I am eternally bound to the Queens Majesty, and bound to remain her Vassal as long as I live; And that I owe much to some other great Lord's of His Maj •• ty's Council; And that his Grace, by my Lord Keeper's bold and much-mistaken Information to His Majesty, that the Parliament cannot examine Errors and Oppressions in such an arbitrary Court as the Star-chamber is, doth keep off His Majesty from using his Clemency towards me, or permitting me to employ my best Endeavors to serve him. My Lord's, Grace and Secretary Windebank, have good reason to wish me out of the Parliament, and out of the World too, if they conceive I have no other business there, than to complain against them: And so hath the Lord Keeper, and Sir J. Lamb. If her gracious Majesty (whom than willingly offend I will rather die) will be pleased to set aside the Relations those two Personages have towards Her Majesty, and set her poor Servant at liberty, to take his course for Redress for those intolerable Concussions they have used against him. And that I do not speak herein beside my Books, I pray you and your Friends to peruse the bundle of Papers I send you, which I desire you to return to me, &c.
Through the Perswasion of those about the King, whom the Letter discovers, Lincoln was like to lie by it, and to be shut out of Mercy by an irreversible Decree. But the Lord's of the Upper House, after they had looked about them a while, on Nov. 16. sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower, to deliver him to then Officer of the Black Rod, who conducted him to the Parliament, and their Lordships gave him his Place among his Brethren in the Bishops-Bench. The King did soon hear of his Carriage, that he neither complained, nor so much as glanced at his Persecutors: As a true Lover of his Country said, Cic. Ep. Fam. lib. 10. Non me impedient privatae offensiones, quo minùs pro Reip salute etiam cura inimicis consentiam. His Majesty heard more, That he was his faithful Minister, and Stable to stand for him in all motions, and did not refrain to fall sharply upon those Lord's, to whom he owed his Releasement, for not speaking dutifully of His Majesty, and of his Actions, with Reverence. Upon it the King sent for him, and had conference with him alone till after midnight, and made him some amends for the Evils past, by commanding all Orders filed, and kept in any Court or Registry, upon the former Hearings and Dependencies against him, to be slighted, cancel'd crazed, that no Monument or Memorial of them might remain. So A • m. Probus tells us what Reparation was made to Alcibiades, after he was brought home to Athens from his Exile, Pilae, in quibus devotio scripta fuit contra Alcibiadem, in mare praecipitatae, post quàm à Spartá revocatus est? To quote a nearer Example; When Constantine let Athanasius return again to his See at Alexandria, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Athan. ad Solit. Vit. p. 823. All that was engross'd against Athanasius, he commanded the Memory of it to be rid out of the way, and all of it to be blotted out. Look for such another Instance in Symmachus Ep. p. 127. of him that was thrice honor'd, in being reinvested in those Honors, from which he was degraded, Majus quiddam est honorem restituere, quam dedisse, &c. For, Fortune may confer, but only Judgment restores to Honor. I am come to the end of those Suits with which our Bishop was overwhelmed, and still made Defendant against the King: Let Posterity observe how he was censured, and grievously, but for two things, tampering with Witnesses, (never known before to be a fault in the Realm of England ) and for being suspected to have received two Letters in Cyphers, of a mystical sense, and as slight regard. Being accused for divulging the King's Counsels, and for Subornation of Witnesses, he broke the neck of those Bills: Being questioned for his Book, in the High-Commission Court, he wound himself out of the Labyrinth of all their Articles: From an Hodg-potch of new Informations in Star-chamber he delivered himself, by adventuring to appeal from that Court to the Parliament; and in that Parliament to which he appealed, he sits a Member and Peer, and sees all Papers of Record against him torn, and burnt to Ashes. Ut advertas feliciter faclum reum, quem sic videas absolutum, Sym. Ep. 87. Be the Conclusion those words of Ezek. c. 17. v. 24. All the trees of the field shall know, that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low true: have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish. Which the great Poet had rather ascribe to a blind Goddess, in his Poetical License, Aen. 12. Multos alterna revisens—Lusit, & in solidum rursus fortuna locavit.
131. A Prisoner, whose Liberty I much longed for, is released, but out of Limbo into Hell. Can the worst word be had enough for those fatal days? Now being come with him as far as the Door of the Parliament, into which he entered upon the Call of the Lord's, I turned away for no little time, and interrupted myself for above two years from writing anymore, not out of Sloth, but Disdain. To part with him till his last day, was against my purpose; and to keep him company in those boisterous times, wherein a Senate of rigid men was dangerous. I was at such a stay as Alexander in the dry Country of the Susitans, Pigebat & consistere & progredi, Curt. lib. 7. It was contrary to the Project of my Work to stop, and as contrary to my Mind to go forward in the Hurricane of an intemperate Rebellion: But it is resolved to look over somewhat of one of the most bloody Tragedies that ever was performed on the Earth, rather than omit his part, who was so loyal in his Actings, and so magnanimous in his Sufferings: And this may be done with the less unwillingness, from one Passage that will recreate the Writer, and the Reader, that the chief Engineers, that wrought the Thunderbolts at the Forge, and laid the foundation of all ensuing Mischief, lived to see themselves thrust out of their Den by a Brewers Drayman, with his tatter'd Regiment; a Passage to be kept forever upon the Engravings of Memory, and would not be pleasant, but burdensome to know it and not to publish it: As Archytas of Tarentum said, If a man were lifted up among the Stars, to know their order and motion, the knowledge of it, so admirable, would be ingrate unto him, unless he met with some, to whom he might relate it. So I am full of this, to tell it to Posterity, That the pitiful handful of Lord's Temporal (and now Temporary) that adhered not to the King, and cashiered the Lord's Spiritual out of their Society, for their immovable Fidelity, were dismounted forever from their own Privilege and Honor, and might pawn their Parliament-Robes if they pleased. And the remainder of the Commons, after Pride 's Purge, was so despicable, that every Tongue was so audacious to give them the nick-name of the Posteriors of a Beast; and they put it up, lest angry Wits should paste a greater Scorn upon them. As Cas. Severus satisfied himself with the Downfal of his Adversary, Vivo, & quo vivere libeat Asprenatem reum video, Quintil. lib. II. So this one Scene hath a good Catastrophe in the cruel Interlude, That the small, but most spiteful part of this continuing Parliament, held up their Tail, though not their Hand, at the Bar, and went out itself in such a stink in the Snuff, that all cry sie at it, that have their Nostrils opened. So my Mind is collected again, and my Heart at some Peace in itself, to see the Honor of Heavenly Justice settled so far.
132. And to Preface no more, and no less could be said; A Parliament was sitting when our Bishop had his Liberty, which held in its Fragments twelve years and six months: Nay, when the stub of the Members were baffled, and spurn'd out of the House by the Russian Cromwell, these Bankrupts opened their Shop once again, and by a post limintum recovered their places; so that we reckon nineteen years from their first Call to their last Suppression. Umbra serotina; A shadow is longest at Evening, when the Sun is ready to set. And our Sun went down quickly, when this shadow was so far extended. But there is a better similitude for it in Pliny Nat. Hist. lib. 2. cap. 14. A Serpent was taken at the River Bagrada of 120 foot long, and the skin, says he, was hung up in the Capitol, as long as such stuff could endure. Mark this; a Serpent, the longest that ever was heard of, the skin kept when it was mortified, and preserved in the Senate-house. Who can miss to apply it? A Serpentine brood of Men; none ever lasting so long in that High Court: withered away to a skin, or Skeleton: all were right, if they had been hung up in the Capitol. This Serpent was young and the worst it could do was to hiss, when Lincoln was brought in to sit with his fellow Bishops. He had not been many hours there, when he was amazed to see divers composed of new and strong Passions; instigated to boldness by Scotch Confederacy; heightened up by the Petitions and Mutinies of City and Country; and preached into disorder by Presbyterian Divines: For a muffled Zeal for Religion hath a finger in all Combustions. And as one says, Multitudo vana superstitione capta meliùs vatibus, quàm ducibus suis paret, Curt. lib. 3. Church-men are the most dangerous Instruments to turn Male-contents into Sword-men, who being prepossessed with an ill opinion of the Times, will quickly humble their Judgment under the Conscience of their Ministers. But what Credit can it be to our Bishop, for such Peers to take him into their number by their peremptory Vote? None, if he had answered their expectation. Yet his chief Friends were as faithful and noble-hearted as ever sat upon the Benches of the House. And it is no good thrist to cast out Gold-filings with the dust, as if all were dust. These must be severed from the rest, to their immortal praise. It is as true, that he was sought for by some of the rest, who had only an eye to the North-Star of their own Anti-monarchical Interest: For he that was ordinarily read in man might know, this able Prelate was to be left out, that had so general an insight into all Affairs and Motions of State. As Zeno praised Ismenias his Music, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that he could play well upon all Instruments. But when the disloyal Part hoped, that a Man of a great Spirit, and so much injured, would revenge himself upon the Causes of his Troubles, and Pipe after their Tune, they were overshot to imagine it. Though he is bound to be most true that is most trusted, yet no man was bound to be true to them, whom his Majesty, as appears by his Writ, trusted with his most concerning and weighty Counsels, and were false to him that gave them Capacity to treat upon them. They that did intend to employ him in their Faction, did repent in one day, that ever he came among them. For it was in so little time that one of them said aloud, We have conjur'd up a Spirit, I would we could lay him down again. No harm will come to his Honor, that some in printed Books have lifted at him, as A. Will. p. 197. gibe, him for closing again with the King, and shuggling, when he saw the Ax laid to the Root of Episcopacy. For he staid not to long to declare himself, till the Hare was started out of the Bush. But S. A. W. goes further, p. 175. for thus he Censures: We may observe the Judgment of God on him, for flying from the Parliament his Protector, to give wicked Counsel to to the King his former Prosecutor. Those Temporary Judgments and Ruins were probably foreseen; but woe be to him that looks not further to the Judgment of the great Day. Those that troubled the Land like him not, as he was truly himself, but in such a Character as they had framed of him to themselves. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as they self, Psal. 50.21. It was St. Augustine 's Fortune to be so misconstrued, and he defends himself wittily, Ep. 7. ad Marcel. Non me diligunt, si non quod sum, sed quod non sum diligunt. They love not me, but another for me that mistake me. It is not strange if those Members of Parliament were weary of him, I am sure he was more out of taste with them. As who could choose, when he met with all fort of Brain-sick Factions combined in one Couplement? It was better for him after thirteen months to be cast out, and lockit up again in Imprisonment, than to continue in the gathering together of the Froward, and insurrection of wicked Doers. In hoc res devoluta erat, ut nisi quis malus fuerit, salvus esse non possit, Salvi. l. 5. No Safety for any within those Walls, nor scarce without, but to run Horse and Man to Hell, with Decius, not to save their Country, but to ruin it.
133. What a giddy Pin man's life is turned upon? Here's a Prisoner and a Freeman; in the Peoples favor, and out with them: repulsed from the Court, and brought to the King's Presence, and to kiss his Hand; and all this variety in two days. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Diod. Sic. lib. 18. The rowlings and reciprocations of Fortune were strong on both sides. Though his Restraint was over, his Liberty was still dangerous, as Salmasius says of Ambustius Valerius p. 840. in Solm. Quem condemnatio non perdidit, nec absolutio liberavit. Misfortune exercised him as Original Sin doth the Just: The Condemnation of it was taken away, but not the Malignity. The outcry was among the revolted Lord's, That he was good for nothing. Not for the Commonwealth; for he did maintain what the King had done for our Liberties. Not for Religion; for he was rivetted fast to the Hierarchy of the Church. Not for himself; for they expected he should have been a strong Accuser of divers whom they hated, and knew he had matter enough for a heavy Information: but they saw he was like a man dumb, and in whose mouth were no reproofs, Psal. 38.14. Not a word came from him, that he had been Prosecuted, Censur'd, Imprison'd, Sequestred, Riffled: but he stood like one in the same point, that had enjoyed quiet and honor fifteen years before. Hereupon both Houses despised him, as one that would contribute nothing to their ends: and what should they do with this Gamaliel in their Council? for when they had plotted to slay some principal Counselors and Servants of the King, and this Bishop would bring no Proofs to make them guilty men, his Sentence was in effect, Refrain from these men, and let them alone, Acts 5.38. Himself being now safe, and by God's Mercy free from Impeachments; it was a comfort to him to see, nay to procure the Safety of his Enemies. Sunt haec quidem magna, sed in alio: in hoc vero minima, si caeteris virtutibus comparentur, Plin. Ep. l. 3. How fain would some say the like for those, whom they adorn with their praise? But to revenge no wrongs; to requite them with no retaliation, that had bitterly provokit him, it was so ordinary with him, that in such a man it riseth to no remarkable Observation. And truly it was no time to punish for a particular quarrel, but to look to the security of a tottering Kingdom. Prudence might Challenge somewhat to make him remiss, as well as Charity. Yet the Injuries done him, with their mischief in one aggregate, deserved a Trial, that would have made as loud a noise as ever came to a Bar. For the Practisers, as the Fox said of his Cubs, If there be one good in the litter, there was never a bad For the practices they were such as could not have seen the light, but would have brought pal • ness on the Actors. And, which was worst of all, the Bishop could see no Appearance, which might efface his Apprehension, but that if his Adversaries were in power again, they would show no penitency for the evil they had done him. Yet when their Agents came to him to feel his Pulse, they sound it beat so calm and even, that he sent them Messages to enhearten them, That if they had no w • rse Foes then 〈◊〉 , they might fear no harm, and that he saluted them with the Charity of a B ••• p. This was home, and as far as moral sweetness could go. It a 〈…〉 , at non ignoscere videaris, sed absolvere, says Sencca: So his bencht was so complete, that he did rather seem to absolve those Nocents as a Judge, then to pa •• ion them as a private Man. So confident were his Malevolents to play with his Gentleness, that Kilvert durst come to him without a Medi • o • , to crave Pardon and Indemnity for all wrongs he had done. Says the Bishop, I assure you pardon for that you have done before, but this is a new fault, that you take me to be of so b • s • a Spirit, as to file myself with tredding upon so mean a Creature: Live still by Petty-fogging and Imp •• ching, and think that I have forgotten you. Yet he kept Kilvert two hours in private with him, before he let him go; and then he sent him to his Cellar with his Servants, but with this Censure upon the Discourse which had past between them, That his Enemies could not be so bad, as that Fellow made them; but for Kilvert 's part he was worse in treachery, and readiness to do all devilish Offices, then he could have imagined. Thus far to the demonstration of his Christian Mind, and his Continency that he would not render evil for evil, that he would not gratify the Parliament with Complaints against his Persecutors. The not doing, or suspension of such an act, is as much, or more praise-worthy than the doing of divers things that are very plausible, and may run well with the close of Beza 's Epigram in Parodie, Quod tu fecisti, sit licet ingens: At quod non saceres ho • ego miror opus.
134. But the Injuries done to private Man, were Trif • les to the great Affairs that were in hand. His Majesty's Affairs, which were in great decadence, took him up wholly; and how could he be safe? A good Subject cannot make any difference between the King's Fortunes and his own. A full Declaration of the Storms that were raised concerns not this piece. It was apparent that the Scotch were at one end of the Fray in the North, and the Presbyterians about London at the other end in the South: both confederate to root up, cast down, syndicate, control, and do what they lust; and let them have their own will, it would scarce content them. Our wise Church-man knew, that he that fears the worst prevents it soonest: Therefore he did not lose a minute to try all his Arts, if he could quench the flame amongst the heady Scots, whose common sort were like their Preachers, Tumidi magis animi quàm magni, as Casaubon notes it in the Atherians, Lib. 1. Athen. cap. 20. rather of a swelling, than a noble Spirit. Their own polite Historian says more, Dromond Jam. 5. p. 161. That Hepburn Prior of St. Andrew's, the Oracle of the Duke of Albany, told him, That he must remember that the People whom he did command (for he was Regent) were ever fierce, mutinously proud, and know not how to obey, unless the Sword were drawn. What hope then of their Submission, when they had framed Covenants, Articles, gathered a Convention no less in Power, no less in Name than a Parliament, without their Prince's leave, and became Assailants to maintain that, and what they would have more, with the Sword. Let all Ages remember, that this sprung from no other occasion, but that the King invited them to prayer in public, in such a Form of Liturgy as himself used, putting no greater burden upon their Conscience than upon his own. The Peccatulum was, that there wanted a little in mode and usual way to commend the Book unto them. Perhaps the Error went a little further, that King James his Promise was not observed, as the Reverend Spotswood doth not conceal it, p. 542. That the Lord Hamilton, King James his Commissioner, having ratified the Articles of Perth by Act of Parliament, assured the People, that his Majesly, in his days, should never press anymore change and alteration, in matters of that kind, without their consent. Admit this Promise, calculated for the days of King James, was obliging as far as the Meridian of King Charles, yet nothing was presented to them against true Doctrine, or Divine Worship: for all the Learning of their Universities could never make the matter of the Liturgy odious. And let it be disputed, That the Book was not authoritative without the public Vote, and Consent of the Nation in some Representative. Yet if a Prince so pious, so admirable in his Ethics, did tread one inch awry in his Politicks, must the Cannon be brought into the Field, and be planted against him, to subvert his Power at Home, and to dishonor him abroad! was it ever heard, that upon so little a Storm Seamen would cut Cabble and Mast, and throw their Cargo over-board, when there was no fear to shipwreck anything, but Fidelity and Allegiance? God was pleased to deprive us of Contentment and Peace for our own wickedness; or Civil Discords, that lasted near as long as the Peloponnesian War, had never risen from so slender an occasion. The merciful and soft-hearted King could have set his Horse-feet upon their Necks, in his first Expedition, which stopped at Barwick, if he had not been more desirous of Quietness than Honor and Victory. I guess whom Dromond means in the Character of Jam. 3. p. 118. That it is allowable in men that have not much to do, to be taken with admiration of Watches, Clocks, Dials, Automates, Pictures, Statues: But the Art of Princes is to give Laws, and govern their People with wisdom in Peace, and glory in War: to spare the humble, and prostrate the proud. Happy had it been if his Majesty had followed valiant Counsel, to have made himself complete Conqueror of those Malapert Rebels, when they first saw his face in the North. But the Terms of Pacification which they got in one year, served them to gather an Army, and to come with Colours displayed into England the next year, which was the periodical year of the King's Glory, the Churches Prosperity, the Common Laws Authority, and the Subjects Liberty. Threescore and eighteen years before, when England and Scotland were never at better League, Abr. Hartwell passeth this Vote in his Reginâ literatâ, more like a Prophet than a Poet,
135. And what could Lesly have done then with a few untrain'd, unarmed Jockeys, if we had been true among ourselves? The Earl of Southampton spake heroically, like a Peer of an ancient Honor, That the Bishop of Durham with his Servants, a few Millers and Plowmen, were wont to beat those Rovers over the Tweed again, without raising an Army. If the People had not imprudently chosen such into our Parliament, as were fittest to gratify the Scots, day had soon cleared up, and Northern Mists dispersed. But our foolish heart was darkened; and any Scourge was welcome that would chastise the present Government: we thought we could not be worse, when we could scarce be better. We greedily took this Scotch Physic, when we were not sick, but knew not what it was to be in health. An Ounce of common Sense might have warned us, That a Kingdom may consist with private men's Calamities, but private men's Fortunes cannot consist with the ruin of a Kingdom. The Love of Money is the Root of all Evil. Many in England thought they sat at a hard Rent, because of Ship-money; and would fire the House wherein their own Wealth was laid up, rather than pay their Landlord such a petty Tribute, as was not mist in times of Plenty: but in short time their Corn and Plate went away at one swoop, when their stock was low. The exacting of Ship-money, all thought it not illegal, but so many did, as made it a number equivalent to all. And a Camel will bear no more weight than was first laid upon him. Nec plus instituto onere recipit, Plin. lib. 8. cap. 18. This disordered the Beast; and being backed with some thousands of Rebels, marchit on as far as Durham, made him ready to cast his Rider. The Royal part was at a stand, and could go no further than this Question, What shall we do? As Livy says of the Romans, catchit in an Ambush at Caudis, Intuentes alii alios, cum alterum quisque compotem magis mentis ac consilii ducerent. In such a Perplexity every man asks his Fellow, What's best to be done? and being dozzled with fear, thinks every man wiser than himself. Lincoln spake what was fit for Comfort, and did what he was able for Redress. He looked like the Lanthorn in the Admiral, by which the rest of the Fleet did steer their Course. And as Synesius gives a Precept to a Bishop, Ep. 105. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , To do as much work as all his Clergy beside: So this Man bestirred himself, and ran before the most diligent in this Chase. When he was a Courtier he had ever declined Acquaintance with James Marquess of Hamilton, now he made him his most Intimate, waited on him at his Lodgings, went in hand with him to the King, tried him every way, what Counsel he had in his Breast, to breed Loyalty in the Scottish Army, that the Contagion might not breed the same Rudeness in the English, and would give an even poise to such uneven Humors. The Bishop knew not what to make of this Marquess, Incertum Lar sit, an larva; whether he were a good, or a bad Genius. Only he said he found everything in him contrary to the Vulgar Opinion, which esteemed him cunning and false. For he took him to be no false one, had will enough to help the King: neither did he find any great Cunning in him, but rather that he wanted a Head-piece. So he laid him and aside, but used him sparingly, because he could not frame things of any great concernment from him. Then he gets acquaintance with Mr Alexander Henderson, and some of his Disciples in Commission with him: presents them, feasts them, offered good pay to them, and the Heads of their Faction, as much as the King could spare, which was the only Bait to catch his Country-men, who were needy, and ravenous for Prey. Which is well set out in Salust. p. 187. Feras omnis generis, quo magis sunt attenuatae penuriâ, co magis praecipites & • ffraenatas ruere in perniciem videmus. All Beasts will venture their Lives to devour what they can get, when they are hungry. The Bishop was sure he dealt with such as were bare and necessitous, from the Orcades to Berwick, and that it was part of their Errand into England to carry away Gold, and to get Pensions. But the House of Commons, that knew their half famished Fortunes, as well as the Bishop, voted such a Mass of Money to them, by a word, which co • t England dear, called Brotherly Assistance, that the King with all his Exchequer and perhaps his Credit, was not able to raise it, far less to out-bid it. Yet Lincoln gave not over to persuade their headstrong Party to have no quarrel with the Church of England; to draw no hatred upon themselves, by reaching at the Subversion of the Episcopal Dignity, which was never wanting here, since the Nation received the Gospel of Christ: Bade them remember what Vows their Kirk had made, and printed them in their Common-Prayers, never to unquiet the Peace of this Land, since Queen Elizabeth, Anno 3. of her Reign, did beat the French out of Leith, and compelled their Forces to return home, conducted under the best Soldiers of France, whose purpose it was to drown the Protestant Religion in the Blood of their Lord's of the Congregation. Hereupon some of Henderson 's Assistants staggered, and bade leave our Church to its own staple Order; when at the same time, in their private meetings, they began to forsake this moderation: They saw how their Debt of Brotherly Assistance would be paid the better, if the Revenues of the Prelates were confiscated. They looked upon their own Work, that they had dethron'd Bishops in Scotland, and so long as England kept up that Dignity, it cried Shame upon their Confusion: And if Bishops lived at Durham and Carliste, so near to their Borders, they suspected the like would creep in again at Glasgow and Edenburg. And their intention was, to shape our Church as ill as their own, to make us as odious to the King as themselves, that both our Offences might grow higher than the hope of a Pardon could fly unto. So, in fine, our Bishop perceived that he dealt with men that made no scruple to shift from Promise, and to break Faith. Diodorus, lib. 3. tells of strange men in the Island of Taproban, Divisam linguam habentes, & eodem tempore duobus hominibus perfecre loquntur. I would such double Tongue, had lived as far off as Taproban, that we had never known them. The end of this Conflict was, when Entellus could not overcome, Vastos quatit aeger anhelitus artus, Aen. lib. 5.
136. No sooner had the Northern Carles begun their Hunts-up, but the Presbyterians flocked to London, from all quarters, and were like Hounds ready to be entered: They had struggled in the days of Q. Elizabeth and K. James, to set up their Discipline, (Patriae communis Erynnis) but in vain. After twenty Repulses they began afresh; Tantus novelli dogmatis regnat furor, Prud. de Coron. and though their Liquor was stale, and sour as dead Wine, they broach'd it now again, to set out Teeth on edge. The Stings of Wasps once lost, are never repaired; but these were like Staggs, that had cast their Horns often, but new ones sprouted up. The Independents (the same Creature with the Brownists, but had shed their upper Coats, and looked smoother) these had not yet a Name. And as Alexander spoke neglectfully of the Cadusians, Quod ignoti sunt, ignobiles sunt, nunquam ignorari viros fortes, Curt. lib. 4. so these were of no reckoning in the first sally of the tumultuous times, and such Ignotes were not courted, but passed over as a Pawn at Chess, that stood out all of Play. The wise Bishop turned his Skill upon the Presbyterians, being less distasteful to them in his Person, than any that wore a Rochet. He laid down his Reasons to them in many Conferences, with such prudence, such softness and lenity, that they confessed, for his part, he deserved a great Place of Pre-eminence: And some of the chief Lord's of that Knot made him such Offers of Honor and Wealth for his share, if he would give way to their Alterations, that they would buy him, if his Faith had been salaeble, with any Price. The worst Requital that could be propounded to an honest man, and of the narrowest, to scantle their Blessing to him alone, that labor'd for a Public Good: As Ben. Johnson hath put it finely into his Underwoods, p. 117.
137. The power of the Presbyterians was so great in Tumults and concourse of base People, that their Conclusions were strong, though their Premises were weak, to blunt the power of ancient Episcopacy. Nam quae est ista nova & stulta sapientia, novitatem quaerere in visceribus antiquitatis? Optat. lib. 6. Yet in all this Lincoln was their Days-man, and gave them considerate Answers; but he did wind them off, and would spin the Webb no further with them, when he perceived they aimed more at a regulated Crown, than a regulated Mitre. Just as Pausanius says of the Messenians, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . That they would change their Kings into Regents of a new name, subject to the People, and answerable for their Faults. So these would make our King as subject to their Elderships, as a Stadt-holder in the Netherlands; as to have no Government in Church-Affairs as their King, (I mean their Christian King) to be liable to their Censures, to execute their Verdicts, without disputing the Justice of them. Their politick Aphorisms are far more dangerous, That His Majesty is not the highest Power in his Realms; That he hath not absolute Sovereignty; That a Parliament sitting is co-ordinate with him in it: He may have the Title of only Supreme, yet a Senate have an essential part without the Name. The Sovereignty was mixed, and distributed into the Hands of King, Lord's, and Commons. Though a Nation war against a King, and they on the Merit of the Cause have the worser side, yet may he not war against the Public Good on that account, nor any help him in such a War. When a man's Possession of the Crown doth cease to be the means of the Public Good, it is then his Duty to resign, and no Injury to be deprived of it. Though the Power of the Militia be expressly given to the King, it shall not be his alone, unless it be expressed it shall not be in others. Do not these Aphorisms suit horribly well with the 13th to the Romans? How could God have sealed the King's Safety and Commission with a plainer Text, and a stronger Warrant? Shall these crooked Rules obliquate those loyal Maxims, which are so strait in St. Paul? These are Junius Brutus 's Theorems, or worse, which are top-heavy, and will fall with their own weight into Hell. Worthy Lincoln heard the Presbyterian Encroachments upon all other points with a civil welcome; but when such Divinity, not fit for English Subjects, was pieced unto them, he would brook no more Addresses. The Cony-skin is easily plucked off from the Body, but it slicks at the Head. O what a Flood-gate have they drawn up with these disloyal Tenants, through which a Deluge of War and Mischief hath burst out! Should I tell them, that they have boasted, that their Discipline did never prevail in a State, but in spite of the Princes of the place? They know it is true, and that Parsons, Fisher, and other Jesuits have told them of it. Saepius olim religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta, quoth Lucretius. This was Olim, a good while since. But Grotius says of the modern sort of these Ministers, and some Popish Priests, Per quos communis hujus seculi pest is in utras{que} partes vulgata est, Hist. p. 57. Which made a Marshal of France, desirous of his Countrys Peace, wish, That every Minister had a Priests Head in his Belly, that they might be rid of them both. The Devil wanted not the cunning to jostle Heathen Princes out of their Rights, by Stratagems of Religion: Cleomenes taught the Delphic Oracle how to cast Demaratus out of his Kingdom: So Pausan. in Lacon. It was an easier thing than for Savanarola, a Preacher of Christ, to preach the Florentines out of an Optimacy into a Popular Government. The Citizens burnt him afterwards at a Stake in their Streets; they should have fired him in his Pulpit. I must charge it on our Presbyterians, that their Thunder-clapps of Rebellious Doctrine hurried our three Kingdoms into a most bloody War; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Demosth. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . The Plant comes from him that sowed the Seed. With which Similitude Cicero arrests M. Anton. Ut in seminibus causa est stirpium & arborum, sic hujus luctuosissimi belli causa Tu Fuisti, Phil. 2. But what care these men to plead guilty to this Bill? For a Bell-weather of their Flock writes, I dare not repent of it, nor forbear the same, if it were to do again, in the same state of things, Holy Commonw. p. 486. What hope have we of Good from such Zealots? What Comfort ever to have Peace, when the greatest Incendiaries do promise us, that they will never be better?
138. Sir Fr. Walsingham, an honorable Counselor, did not mistake them; but he was mistaken that says ever he was a Puritan, as this Letter will testify, written to Mons. Crittoy, Secretary of France, and to be read in the Supplement of the Cabala of Letters, p. 40.
139. Had Secretary Walsingham tasted what Lincoln did from undermining Presbyterians, Mons. Crittoy had heard more and worse from him than he did, in that honest Letter: You shall have the Case as it follows. No sooner did this Parliament open, but Disquietness and Uproars began with it, in many Churches, to disturb the Holy Service: The House of Commons were their Countenance, therefore provided no Remedy to control them: That Impiety, which was wont to be abhor'd, was brooded and cherished: Yet the House of Lord's appointed a Committee of their own Members, to give Glory to God, by driving Profaners out of his Temple; and at the same time selected a Sub-Committee out of Divines of very contrary Opinions, for Indifferency sake, to propose unto them matters fit for their cognizance, to prevent these Clamours odious in our Land, and scandalous to other Nations. The Bishop of Lincoln had the Chair both in the Committee and Sub-committee, with Authority given him to call together those Assistants, whom the Lord's had named to consult for Peace, and to stop the Breaches which Sedition had caused. Those which were named for the Sub-committee, were some few more than did meet, but such as did constantly appear to lay their Heads together, are recited in the Margin, who were called by Lincoln 's Letter to attend, in these words.
—I am commanded by the Lord's of the Committee for Innovations in matters of Religion, that you know, that their said Lordships have assigned and appointed you to attend them as Assist ants in that Committee; and to let you know in general, that their Lordships do intend to examine all Innovations in Doctrine or Discipline, introduced into the Church without Law, since the Reformation. And if their Lordships shall find it behooveful, for the good of the Church and State, to examine after that the Degrees and Perfection of the Reformation itself, which I am directed to intimate unto you, that you may prepare your Thoughts, Studies and Meditations, accordingly, expecting their Lordships Pleasure for the particular points, as they shall arise.
Dated Martis 12. 1640.
The Bishop, and as many as were of his Judgment, found no way but to let them, that seemed to be distasted with the Church for certain things, have somewhat granted that they asked for, to let Suspicions pass for Proofs, and any Point of a dubious sense for a kind of Error: As they that raise a Blister where there was none before, to prepare a Cure for preventing an Apoplexy. Necessity hath no Law, but it shows a great deal of Reason, to unsettle some few things by Condescension, for the settlement of a general Peace. Sometimes a little Loss is a great Gain: Those words of Tully will make it good, in his Oration for Plancius, Haec de sapientissim is & clarissimis viris, &c. non semper easdem sententias ab iisdem, sed quascun{que} Reip. status, inclinatio temporum, ratio concordiae post ularet, esse defendendas. Now this Theological Junto had six meetings in West. College, in all which time all Passages of Discourse were very friendly between part and part. The Complainants noted the Passages of some Books that suited not, in their judgment, with the Doctrine of our Church; they were condemned. Somewhat in Ceremony and outward form was presented, as beside Canon, and supernumerary; they had their asking to bid it be restrained. Their Exceptions against our Liturgy were petty and stale, older than the Old Exchange; yet, for their contentment, the Vote of the Meeting did bend one way to castigate some Phrases, to publish the next printed Books, in all Passages from the beginning to the end, with the Translation of K. James 's Bible, and to furnish the Calendar altogether with Lessons of Canonical Scripture, dispunging the Apocryphal. The Bishop had undertaken a Draught for regulating the Government Ecclesiastical, but had not finished it. The sudden and quiet dispatch of all that was done already was attributed to the Chairman's Dexterity, who could play his Prize at all Weapons, dally with crooked Humours, and pluck them straight; bring all Stragglers into his own Pound, and never drive them in; foresee a Tempest of Contradiction the best that ever I knew, and scatter it before it could rise; and won all his Adversaries insensibly, into a compliance, before they were aware. To this day they of the Nonconformists that survive, and were present, will tell you that they admired two things in him, in their Phrase, his Courtesie, and his Cunning.
140. When Peace came so near to the Birth, how it abortived, and by whose fault, comes now to be remembered. The Presbyterians knew not what to ask more than was yielded to them, before the face of such Scholars, with whom they were matched: But when they were among themselves, in their own Body, they would stand to nothing. Itdem eadem possunt horam durare probantes? Hor. Ep. 1. They did never abide long by their own Reformings; for they walk by no Church-Rule of any Age. How soon would they be weary of other men's Concessions? A few weak Brethren might take these Alterations in good part, which were like to be obtained; but the noted men of the Faction could not bring themselves into Fame and Name, and somewhat else, but in a greater confusion: The old Waters must be troubled more, before they could catch the great Fish in their Flue: As one says of the Jesuits, that profess Poverty, and yet build stately Colleges, richly endowed, that they are not Mendicants for small Monies, but Beggars by wholesale: So these could make no Trade out of such small Bargains, as mend this, and mend that, but it would be worth an Alderman's Wealth to a lucky Stickler, to be a Reformer by wholesale: Then, as Aristophanes jeers in his Equit. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; He that's low today, may be aloft tomorrow. Therefore they make Clamour against the Bishops; for, split that holy Order, and they knew all would sink with it. No Revilings were thought ill enough to make them odious; as Theophylact complains of his Bulgarians, Episcoporum accusationibus tanquam suorum defensionibus ninituntur, Baron. ann. 1073. par. 88. So our disobedient Children, by blotting the good Name of their Reverend Fathers, supposed themselves would look as white as a new-plaster'd Wall. It was their Eye, which was evil, that could not see the Good of our Apostolical Government: Like Luther 's Fool, in his Comment on Gen. 13, who standing in the Sun, and looking downward, complained his Shadow was crooked. The Presbyterians understood, that they should expose themselves and their Cause to the Censure of wise men, if they did adventure no further in conference at the Sub-committee. Therefore to cut off that Meeting in the heat and great hopes of it, they had a Champion that brought a Bill into the House of Commons, to take away forever Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, Chancellors, &c. called, The Bill of Root and Branch. This man was Sir Ed. Deering, a Knight of strong Abilities. Qui omnes virtutes unus, facti temeritate abstulit; as Paterculus said of Brutus, lib. 1. What must not this poor Church suffer, when her Principalities were deslin'd to be funder'd, before new could be provided, to which all might be firmly fastened? What could a single person do worse, than abrogate all our Laws and Constitutions? Which is the same with that of Demosthenes, ad Timocr. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . What Device was there left to make Sorrow eat further into our Hearts, than to obtrude the new Gewgaw of the Geneva Platform upon us, instead of the Chair which St. Peter, St. John, St. Mark had erected in Europe, Asia, and Africa, from the Primitive Times? Rerum novitate extrusa vetustas, Luc. lib. 3. When the Athenians compelled the Spartans to renounce their own Laws, and to accept those of Athens, Livy pitied them, Dec. 4. lib. 6. Nulla res tanto erat damno, quàm disciplina Lycurgi sublata, cui per annos 800 assueverant. This was worse, compare continuance of time, but much more for Conscience. But did these Innovators sile another Bill then, or ever after, what form of Government should succeed in the place of Episcopacy? No, they could never hammer out such an Engine upon their Anvil; for which Dr. Owen girds them, being then in a good vein, Vind. Evan. p. 216. Wise Builders are they, pull down they will, although they have nothing in the room of what they endeavor'd to destroy Was there never a wise man among them, that had learnt the Polity of the Venetians, no ordinary Statesmen? Where no Officer must depart out of his Government, foreign or domestic, Priusquàm novus in ipsius locum substitueretur, Match. Resp. lib. 1. c. 50. Ours were not such Senators, but like School-boys, that make a Blot greater with wiping it out. It is not an Artist's Work, but a Hangman's, says Tully, to cut off the Limbs of a sound Body, Orat. pro Sestio. Non est ea medicina, cumsanae parti corporis scalpellum adhibetur, at{que} integrae: Carnificina est ista, & crudelitas. But this was their hour, and the power of Darkness. All was in Tumult. The King's Arm was too weak to hold the Balance of Justice: As Plutarch, in Dion, makes or tells a Story, That Pigs were sarrowed in Syracusa, another London, without Ears: And the Soothsayers told Dionysius the younger, upon it, That the People would be contumacious, and give ear to nothing. So you have the first and the last part of the Presbyterians Actings, with the other Divines, whom the Lord's appointed for a Sub-committee. There may well be a Suspicion, when their Deeds do make a Confession, that they would prevail by Force, when they could not by Argument. And thus began the downfall of Episcopacy, which was never heard, never suffered to plead at the Bar of the Parliament in its own Cause, but, as one says pertinently, It was smothered in a Crowd.
141. Anatomists observe, that the thinnest Membrane is that which covers the Brain, that no weight might stop it from production of Notions and Phancies. Certainly it was so in our Bishop's Head-piece, who was consulted every day in weighty Affairs, and had a Task at this time, concurrent with all that went before, to look to the Case of the noble, but unfortunate Earl of Strafford: A Charge of great Crimes was hastily drawn up against him, that he had been a Tyrant in Ireland, and stirred up His Majesty to raise an Army to oppress his Subjects in England and Scotland; Haec passim Dea soeda virum diffudit in ora, AEn. 4. These were the Fictions of Fame, and no more, but made the People cast about distrustful and disloyal Doubts. The Earl, a man of great Wit and Courage, knew not whether the King and all his Friends could save him: In a rebellious nation wrath is set on fire, Ecclus 16.6. And to the shame of Subjects, bewitched with the new Spirit of that Bedlam rage, neither the King nor his Justice could protect any man. Too well do I remember that of Justin, lib. 30. Nec quisquam in regno suo minùs quàm rex ipse poterat. Some say of the French, lukewarm in Religion, that they kneel but with one Knee at Mass; a great number in our rigid Parliament would not do so much, the locking Joynt of their Knee was too stiff to bend at all: Rebellion is a foul word, yet they blush'd not at the deed, who were ashamed of the Title. Then the Scots were resolved not to disband till this brave Lord was headless. Who hath seen a Hedge hog rolled up into a Ball? The whole lump is Prickles, do but touch it, and you hurt your Hand. Convolvuntur in modum pilae, ne quid possit comprehendt praeter aculeos, Plin l. 8. c. 37. So Lessly and his Tykes were bloody and imperious, fastened with much confidence in one body: Who could remove them? Nay, who could touch them, or go about to mollitie them, and get no harm? Then the Tumults of Sectaries, Corner-creepers, and debauched Hang-by's, that beset the dutiful Lord, and Commons with Poniards and Clubbs, were worse than an Army far off. These called for Justice, that is, for the Life of the Earl. What had they to do with Justice? which if it might have fate upon the Bench, and tried them, every Mothers Son of them had been condemned to the Gallows: But it was safer to sit still with Prudence, than to rush on with Courage. Plus animi est inferenti periculum, quàm propulsanti, Liv. lib. 38. The Affailant, that comes to do a Mischief, puts on desperately, and is fiercer than the Defendant: And there is no equal temperature, or counterpoise of Power against the strong Ingredient of a Multitude. I will not say, but many of this Scum invited themselves unbidden to do a Mischief; but there was a Leader, a Presbyter Pulpiteer, that bespoke them into the Uproar from Shop to Shop. Lucius Sergius signifer seditionis, concitator tabernariorum, Cic. pro dom. ad Pont. I need not a Lime-hound to draw after him that was the chief Burgess of the Burrough, who gathered this vain People to a head, that had no Head: Silly Mechanics! Horum simplicitas miserabilis: his furor ipse—Dat veniam, Juven. Sat. 2. But what will he answer, that knew his Master's Will, and ran headlong against it? Now here's the Streight of the Earl of Strafford, exposed to the greatest popular Rage that ever was known: All that his good Angel could whisper into him in Prison, was, to trust to God and a righteous Defense: But whereon should he bottom his Defense? He could not upon the known Law, which is the Merastone to limit and define all Causes for Life, Limb, Liberty, or Living. He must stand to a Trial, whether parcels of petty Offences will make an accumulative Felony; and be arraigned upon a notion of Treason, which could be wrested out of no Statute, nor be paralleled with any President: The Treason was rather in them that called such things Treason, to which no English Subject was liable by his Birth-right. In populo scelus est, & abundant cuncta furore, Man. lib. 2. The Law was too much his Friend, to bring him before the face of it. Anocent man fears the Law; an innocent man fears Malice and Envy. O vitae tuta facultas—Pauperis, angusti{que} laris! O munera nondum—Intellecla, Luc. lib. 5. O the security and sound sleeps of a private Life! If this Earl had not climb'd as high as the Weather-cock of Honors Spire, he had not known the Horror of a Precipice. Isocrates would never meddle with a public Office, says the Author of his Life. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; the Athenians were so spiteful at their Magistrates, that he would not trust them. Demasthenes was employed in great Places, and died untimely by a Poison which he had confected for an evil time. Says Pausan. upon it in Atti. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . He that is entrusted to govern the people, when he hath served their turn, seldom dies fortunately. But this is the man, whose Troubles gave the Bishop occasion to show his Abilities in two points: First, About the circumstance of the examination of the Cause. Secondly, About the Judges of the Cause, that is, Whether Bishops might be such in causâ sanguinis. There is much of it, I confess, but the Learning will recompense the length. And I shall not blemish his Reputation, to say of him what the Orator said of L. Aquilius, Orat. pro Caecinnâ, Cujus tantum est ingenium, ita prompta fides, ut quicquid haurias, purum liquidúm{que} haurire censeas.
142. Before I draw up to the Bishop's Reports, there is more to be premised; as. That there was much ado to score out the Hearing of Strafford with a straight Line, and a Form to give some satisfaction; as a Child is often set upon its Legs before it can go. His Adversaries tossed it about many ways, and managed it chiefly by two persons, Mr. St. John, the King's Solicitor, one that did very bad Service to the King his Master, and the Church his Mother, yet of able parts; therefore I will write the Inscription of his Tomb-stone on the wrong side, and turn it downward to the Earth. The other was John Pym; Homo ex argillâ, & luto factus Epicuraeo; as Tully said of Piso, that is, in Christian English, a painted Sepulcher, a Belly-god. From the first breaking out of the Plot against the Earl, they committed him as a Traitor to the Black Rod; who for anything of Treason, or like to Treason, might go bare-faced through the World, and never be ashamed: For, in the end of all, long after his Commitment, they had no proof towards that Crime, but a Paper brought out of old Sir H. Vane 's Cabinet, by his naughty Son, Crudelis pater est magis an pure improbus ill? What were other Misdemeanors to Treason? Sift any man that hath been long in a great Office, and if his Enemies may be permitted to accuse him, see if he can escape a black Bill, which will found to his peril and disgrace, amplified with the Rhetoric of Malice. So Plutarch defends the gallant Roman Fabius, To 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Not to offend at all in great matters, is more than a man can do. Let me speak of his Judges with reverence: It was a Parliament which is more able to prepare Laws to pass where all are concerned, than to sit upon a Trial where one Subject is concerned: Wise and Weak have the same Right to Judge; therefore Pliny the younger spared not to censure the Conscript-Fathers of the Roman Senate, lib. 2. Ep. In publico concilio nihil est tam inaequale quam aequalitas: quia cum sit impar prudentia, par omnium jus est. Those that are no Body when they are singled and stand alone, must pass for Oracles when they vote with others in the House: Like the Vanity of Astrologers, as Salmasius taxeth them, Chym. p. 795. Singula sidera vix pro numinibus habent: Composita & offigiata potentum numinum instar habere voluerunt. The virtue of such and such a Star is not reckoned in their Art, but put it into a Constellation, that Figure cast into a Globe of Stars, they hold to be propitions, in-flowing into the Life and Death of Men. There were some in this Parliament that out of their Birth and Education were carried to noble Attempts, who would not concur to the Ruin of great Wentworth; but their Names were posted for it by Ruffians, as Enemies to the State: And this was never looked into for a breach of Privilege. An Indignity will never be forgotten, till Truth hath left to breathe. And it was to no purpose to reason it soberly with so violent Opposites: Decernente ferocissimo quo{que} non sententiis, sed clamore, & strepitu, Liv. lib. 20. Their Blood was warmed with the greatness of their number, and confidence in the People: Beside, says the rare Author, in his Essay of Faction, it is often seen, that a few that are stiff will tire out a greater number that are more moderate. What odds then was on their side, that exceeded in quantity and stiffness? Yet everything that is stiff is not straight. But here the bloody part were the Godly in their own Language, they, and no others. All that came from them, was pretended to be for Reformation and common Safety, but as different in event as Numbers that are even and odd. Hypocrisy dwells next door to Virtue, but never comes into its Neighbor's House. What Justice was that which was thrown by forever, which plaid its part so ill, that the very Actors hiss'd it off the Stage, and provided by their own Vote, that it should be seen no more? Quintil. lib. 7. hath this upon the Pleadings of his time, Tot saeculis nullam repertam esse causam, quae sit tota alterisimilis. No Cause was ever pleaded, that was the same with any that went before, in all points and circumstances. But how say you to this Cause, when it was enacted by Statute, That no Cause should be like it for the time to come? Sir Rob. Dallington notes the Subtlety of the Pope in these words: That he never challengeth a Power. till he be able to maintain it, (no more did this High Court) and then, that he never approves a Mischief till it be done. So did not this Court, that would not approve their own Mischief when it was done: They were not ashamed before, and when they shed innocent Blood, but after: Quos cum nihil refert pudet: ubi pudendum est deserit illos pudor, Plaut. in Bacch. Finally, no Evidence can have more light than this, That they knew not how to make their Justice passable, because, before they began, they found so many Knots and Scruples how to enter into a Trial. When they had resolved on a way, the King would have crossed them: Discreet men were afraid, lest Opposition should make them worse: Lincoln is consulted, approves the King's Zeal to use all expedient means to rescue his faithful Servant, but thought it would do hurt, to check what the Parliament had devised for a legal procedure. He that seeks a thing the wrong way, goes so far backward. In all Contests of Power the King is ever thought to do wrong: The King's Greatness, made too much contemptible already, must beware to take a foil at this time: Mary Queen of Scotland, Mother to James the third (who was deemed worthy the Character of Livia the Empress, Ulysses stolata, Ulysses in a Petticoat, Calig. in Suetonius. ) gave this Counfel to her Son on her Death-bed, Suffer not your Prerogative to come in question; but fore-seeing the danger, rather give way to all that in reason is demanded of you, Drum. p. 79. With these Considerations the Bishop proceeds to deliver his Opinion, as followeth, to the Lord's.
143. The first Question which your Lordships have called upon me to resolve is, Whether the House of Commons may examine some of the Members of their House before a Committee of your Lordships? There is no question of the thing, but of the time. Regularly they ought not to do it yet: but ought first to put in a Specifial Charge, and the Reus, or Defendant first be called to his Answer. Then, and not before, Witnesses ought to be produced. This is the regular Course. If the Charge be not Specifial, it may be demurred unto, and need not be answered at all. We have all this in the Acts of the Apostles, cap. 25. Festus brought brought forth Paul to be examined before Agrippa, that he might have 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , v. 27. some certain matter to lay to his charge, so as he might not slip away from it. Therefore a general and uncertain matter will not serve the turn. For otherwise 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , v. 28. it seemed to Festus void of all reason, to send a Prisoner to Rome, and no Charge go along with him. They are called there 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , particular Criminations. This is the regular way before your Witnesses are used. The Star-Chamber goes a little further beside the Rule: For in the King's Cause, upon Affidavit of Sickness, to prevent Mortality, and as it were de been esse, some Witnesses have been admitted to Examination before any Answer put in, or Issue joined. Though these Witnesses were to be re-examined after Issue join'd, in case they recovered. A particular Charge being laid before you, when the House of Commons is a Party, and the Charge of so high a nature as Treason, I shall not advise this Honorable House to use any Chiquancery, or Pettisoggery with this great Representation of the Kingdom; but admit them forthwith to examine their own Members; yet with this Caution, To hew the Names two days before they be produced, to the Solicitor of the Defendant, that he may have notice of the persons. But the House press for Secrecy in the Examination. Well, they are safe enough while they are in the Lord's hands; who have Urim and Thummim, perfect Knowledge, and perfect Integrity: and therefore nothing can be suspected. Are not they surer than other Officers? In ordinary Commissions out of Star-Chamber, my Lord Ellsmore would not allow that any Clerks should be used, to prevent Futility and Evaporation, saying, That the best Commissioner in England was not too good to be the King's Clerk. Secondly, I am as'kt about the Examination of the Peers, and the Assistants of this House upon Oath. There is no question to be made about the Assistants, they are no Peers of this Kingdom; but whether Peers may be produced as Witnesses, and testify upon Oath? A question not sit to be now handled, and impossible to be resolved out of the Rolls of the Parliament; because the Peers give their Testimony both in this Court, and others, either way. And I am confident a Peers Averment against his Fellow Peer cannot be refused either way; especially in case of Treason: For a Peer judgeth his Peer worthy of Death upon his Honor, and therefore may witness against him upon his Honor. In this Court, and almost in this Case, in Alze Pierce her Case, 1 Rich. 2. Num. 21. Lord Roger Beauchamp swears upon the Holy Evangelists: The Lord of Lancaster, King of Castile and Leon, is examined, but not sworn. Nay, both ways have been declared in this House to be all one. Your Lordships declaring that you did not bound, limit, or terminate your Assertion with your Honor, but mount it, and relate it up unto God, that gave you your Honor; and yielded yourselves perjured, if you falsisied in swearing upon Honor; which is just the very same, as if you sware upon the Holy Evangelists. To swear upon Honor, and rest there, were Idolatry. But to swear upon Honor with a Report and Relation to God, who bestowed it upon your Lordships, as a special Favor and Grace, is as Christian an Oath as any in the World: For new Scruples in the manner, as to touch the Book, to look on the Book, to hold up a Finger or Hand to Heaven, are Ceremonies which the House of Commons little regards, but leaves them to us: And the Lord of Strafford is so wise, that he will never question the Honor of his Peers. And why should we trouble ourselves about the circumstance, but leave each Lord called to testisie, to call God as a Witness to his Assertion, in which of these two manners it shall please his Lordship: Not the Book, not the Honor, but the Invocation of God to bear witness to the Assertion, makes the Oath.
144. I am put to it by your Lordships, to speak, in the third place, about the examination of Privy Councillors: Here needs no distinction between Peers and Assistants: This is part of a Privy Councillor's Oath, That he shall keep secret all matters committed and revealed to him, or that shall be treated of in Council. 2. If any Treaty touch his fellow-Councillor, he shall not reveal it unto him, till the King or Council shall require it. I collect now, that matters of Fact he may reveal without violation of his Oath; and that he may be examined of matters revealed unto him, that were treated of in Council, if they were not treated of in Council when he was present: That a Privy-Councillor, for all his Oath, may be examined concerning Words, Advices, or Opinions of another Privy-Councillor, otherwise given than in Council: That Bed-chamber and Gallery Discourse is nothing to the Council-Table: Private Entertainers of the King, when the Counselors attend at the Door, are not to pass for Counselors: Ear-wiggs and Whisperers are no Counselors, but detractors from Counselors: If they advise the Destruction of the King, the State, or the Laws of the Realm there is nothing in the Oath to protect such an Ear-worm, but he may be appeached: For matters which touch another fellow-Councillor, or matters committed otherwise to him, or which shall be treated of in Council, these are not to be concealed from all forts of men, but from private men only; not from the King, not from the Council, (both those are in the Oath) nor from the Parliament: That Privy-Councillots may be examined by Command of the Parliament, for things treated in Council; 2. for things revealed unto them secretly, from the King in his Bed-chamber; 3. and especially, for ear-wigging and treating with the King in private, after things already settled in Council. The Case of Alze Pierce, 1 Rich. II. num. 41. clears all these Doubts: And it is the Case also of a Deputy of Ireland. William of Windsor, Lord-Deputy, misbehaved himself in Ireland; the Council directs Sir Nicholas Dagworth to go thither, and to inquire into his Actions; Windsor makes means to Alze Pierce to keep off this man, under pretence of Enmity betwixt them: This Shunamite, that lay in David's Bosom, prevails with the King to stay Sir N. Dagworth, the Council-Order notwithstanding: The Lord's in Parliament question her for this act, as having drawn with it the Ruin of the State in Ireland: She pleads not guilty, Issue is joined: The Lord's produce inter alios, John Duke of Lancaster, upon his Honor, and Roger Beauchamp Lord Chamberlain, upon the Evangelists: Alze produceth of her part the Steward and Comptroller of the Household: All these four were Privy-Counselors; they depose all of them nothing else but matters treated of in Council, and opposed by Alze Pierce, treating with the King out of Council. So that, if this Record be true, this Case is cleared, Privy-Councillors may not be forced by ordinary Courts of Justice, to reveal things treated of in Council, but may be produced, upon Oath and Honor, to reveal such Secrets by the King, the Council, or the Parliament, especially in detestation of Statewhisperers and Ear-wiggs; yea, though they had taken no Oath at all. Yet God forbid a Privy-Counselor should witness against his Fellow, for publicly venting the freedom of his Judgment at the Board, who is bound to advise faithfully, not wisely; as I do here this day. Should any man be accused for an Error of Judgment? O God defend! peradventure my Error hath set all the rest of the Council straight: Errores antiquorum venerari oportet: si illi non errassent, minùs ipse providissem: otherwise you would take away all Freedom of Debates, nay, almost of very Thoughts. If I knew any man would witness against me for my Council-Table Opinion, I would say to him as Gallus did to Tiberius Caesar, Good Sir, speak you first, for I may mistake, and you may witness against me for it in the next Parliament. Some did make Laws with Ropes about their Necks: What? Must men give their Counsel as it were with Ropes about their Necks? Solomon says, When thou comest to a rich man's table, put a knife to thy Throat. But what's here? When we give Judgment, as we are able, among the Lord's of the Council, must we put an Ax to our Necks? Beware of such Traps, pitying the case of human Weakness.
145. The fourth Question is thus comprised; Whether some Members of the House of Commons may be present at the Examination. Judicially they cannot, the Judicature is in your Lordships; but whether organically and ministerially, is the Scruple to be satisfied. I will be brief in my Conceptions, what is against the claim of the House of Commons, and what is for them. This is not for them, That 50 Edw. 3. one Love was a Witness in Lord John Nevile 's Case; Love denied what he had confessed before two Knights, Members of the Lower House: The House of Commons send them to the Lord's to confront Love; which they did, and Love was thereupon committed. Now, their being here was only to confront, not to assist the Lord's, either judicially or ministerially. Many things make for them, why they may be there, ministerially at least: First, Originally both Houses were together, and so the Commons heard all Examinations; Considerent inter se. Modus ten. Pl. and sat so till Anno 6 Edw. 3. by Mr. Elsing 's Collections, which are not over-authentic. Secondly, After that time, they have, all the House of Commons, been present, when Witnesses were sworn here— Anno 5 Hen. IV. Rot. 11. swears his Fealty before the Lord's and Commons; and two or three days after, by the same Oath, and before the same persons, clears the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Duke of York, from a Suspicion of Treason laid to their charge. The Commons were by, and heard all this. The third Reason is, Mr. Attorny-General, if this Lord were arraigned of Treason (as I pray God bless him from deserving it) would be by, and observe his Defense, and such Witnesses as he should produce for himself, and would, no doubt, bring Counter proofs Sur le Champ, and upon the sudden against the same, if he were able. The House of Commons is in this case the King's Attorny, who make and maintain the charge. So far, out of brief Notes (for take them to be no other) you have a strong Judgment passed upon four Questions. Says Tully in his Brutus, of Caesar 's Eloquence, Tabulam been pictam collocat in bono lumine; He draws his Picture well, and hangs it out to be well seen: So here's a Piece well drawn, and placed in the light of Perspicuity. His next Argument is very long, but of that use to the Reader, that he shall not sinned so much Learning in any Author on that Theme, that I know a Scholar would not want it. They that fostered deadly Enmities against E. Strafford, labored to remove the Bishops from the hearing of his Cause. This Bishop and his Brethren minding to him all the Pity and Help they could show him, the Opposites began to vote them out of Doors, and would not admit them in the Right of Peers in this Cause, because it was upon Life and Blood, Lincoln maintains, that the Lord's did them Injury, and that Bishops in England may, and ought to vote in causâ sanguinis, That they were never inhibited by the Law of this Land, never by the Peers of the Land before this time; That their voluntary forbearance in some Centuries of the Ages before, proceeded from their Fears of the Canons of the Court of Rome, and by the special Leave of the King and both Houses, who were graciously pleased to allow of their Protestations for their Indemnity, as Church-men, when the King and Parliament might have rejected their Protestations, if they had pleased. And much he insisted upon it, that the opponent Lord's grounded their Judgment upon the corrupt Canons of the Church of Rome. Indeed, I find in my own Papers, that the Monks of Canterbury complained against Hubert their Archbishop, to the Pope, for sitting upon Trials of Life and Blood: They could not complain, that he went against the Laws and Customs of England, but their Appeal was to the Pope's Justice; and it was more tolerable for Monks to rake in the Rubbish of the Roman Courts, than for English Barons. And say, in sooth, must not Divines of the Reformed Church meddle in Cause of Blood? 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Amph. Would they be laughed at for this Hypocrisy, or abhor'd? For, who more forward to thrust into the Troops of the late War, than the Ministers, whom they countenanc'd? Have I not seen them prance about the Streets in London, with Pistols in their Holsters, and Swords by their sides? And so for Edg-hill and Newberry, &c. Could they rush into so many Fights, and be clear from cause of Blood? Nay, the Pontisical part make but a Mockery of this Canon; for anno 1633, a Book was printed in Paris, sill'd with a Catalogue of Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests, who had been brave Warriours, most of them Leaders in the Field; the Author, a Sycophant, aimed to please Cardinal Richlieu, and a Fig for the Canons: Reason, Canons, Parliamentary Privileges, nay Religion, are to corrupt men, as they like them for their own ends. Now hear how this Bishop did wage his Arguments for the affirmative.
146. It is to be held for a good Cause, against which nothing of moment can be alleged; such is this concerning the Right of Bishops to vote in causâ sanguinis. First, It is not prohibitum quia malum, not any way evil in itself, no more than it is an evil thing in itself to do Justice. Secondly, It was in use from the Law of Nature, when the eldest of the Family was King, Priest, and Prophet. Thirdly, It was in use under Moses 's Law, and so continued in the Priests and Levites, down to Annas and Caiaphas, and after Christ's death, till the Temple was destroyed; as appears by the scourging of the Apostles, by the stoning of Stephen, and commanding St. Paul to be smitten on the Mouth. Fourthly, It was in use in the persons of the Apostles themselves, as in that Judgment given upon Ananias and Sapphira; in the delivery up to Satan, as most of the ancient Fathers expound that Censure, to be a corporal Vexation: And generally, in all the Word of God, there is no one Text that literally inhibits Church-men more than Lay-men, to use this kind of Judicature: For that Precept, to be no striker, 1 Tim. 3.3. is no more to be appropriated to a Bishop, distinct from the rest of Christian men, than that which is added, not to be given to Wine, that is, immoderately taken. Proceed we to Practice and Use in our own Country. Why, it was in use in this Island before the Romans entered the same, when the Druids gave all the Sentences in Causes of Blood, Si coedes fac • e p • as constituunt, Caesar Bel. Gai. li. 6. And see Mr. Selden 's Epinomis, c. 2. Nor is it like that the Romans, when they were our Masters, should forbid it in Priests, whose Pontifical College, after they had entertained the twelve Tables, meddled in all matters of this kind, Strabo Geogr. lib. 4. And it is as unlike, that the Christian Religion excluded Bishops in this Island from Secular Judicatures, since King Lucius is directed to take out his Laws, for the regulating of his Kingdom, by the Advice of his Council, ex utráque pagina, the Old and New Testament, which could not be done in that Age without the help of his Bishops. See Sir H. Spelman 's Councils, p. 34. Ann. Dom. 185. And how the great Prelates, among the ancient Britain's, were wholly employed in these kind of secular agitations, you may see in the Ecclesiastical Laws of Howel Dha, set forth by Sir H. Spelman, pag. 408. anno 940. And a little before this Howel Dha, lived K. Aetheljtan, in the second Chapter of whose Ecclesiastical Laws we have it peremptorily set down, Hinc debent Episcopy cum Saeculi Judicibus interesse judiciis; and particularly in all Judgments of the Ordeals, which no man that understands the word can make any doubt to have been extended to Mutilation and Death, Sir H. S. Counc. p. 405. ann. 928. And that the Bishops joined always with the secular Lord's in all Judicatory Laws and Acts, under the whole reign of the Saxons and Danes in this Island, we may see by those Saxon-Danish Laws (or rather Capitularies, which among the French and Germans do signify a mixture of Laws, made by the Prince, the Bishops, and the Barons, to rule both Church and Common-wealth) set forth by Mr. Lambert, anno 1568. See particularly the ninth Chapter of St. Edward 's Laws, De his qui ad judicium sorri vel aquae judicati sunt; fol. 128. And thus it continued in this Kingdom long after the Conquest, to wit, in Henry Beu-clerk 's time, after whose Reign it began to be a little limited and restrained; for at Clarendon, anno 1164, 8 Calend. Febr. 11 Henr. 21, a general Record is agreed upon by that King's Special Command, of all the Customs and Liberties of this Kingdom, ever since Hen. the First, the King's Grandfather; as you may see in Matth. Paris, p. 96, of the first Edition; where, among other Customs agreed upon, this is one: Archbishops and Bishops, and all other persons of this Kingdom, which hold of the King in capite, are to enjoy their Possessions of the King as a Barony, and by reason thereof, are to answer before the Judges and Officers of the King, and to observe and perform all the King's Customs: And just as the rest of the Barons ought (for it was a Duty required of them, as the King now by his Summons doth from us) to be present in the Judgments of the King's Courts, together with the rest of the Barons, until such time as they shall there proceed to the mangling of Members, or Sentence of Death.
147. Observe, that there is a diversity of reading in the last words; for Matth. Paris, a young Monk, that lived long after, reads this Custom thus; Quousque perveniatur ad diminutionem membrorum, vel ad mortem. Which may be wrested to the first agitation of any Charge tending that way; but Quadrilogus, a Book written in that very Age, and the original Copy of the Articles of Clarendon, which Becket sent to Rome, extant at this day in the Vatican Library, and out of which Baronius, in his Annals, anno 1164, transcribes it, reads the Custom thus, Usque perveniatur in judicio ad diminutionem membrorum, &c. which leaves the Bishops to sit there, until the Judgment come to be pronounced, amounting to Death, or Mutilation of Members. And as this was agreed to be the Custom, so was it the Practice also, after that 11th year, to wit, in the 15th year of Henry the Second, at what time the Lay-Peers are so far from requiring the Bishops to withdraw, that they endeavor to force them alone to hear and determine a matter of Treason in the person of Becket. Stephanides is my Author for this, who was a Chaplain and Follower of that Archbishop, The Barons say, saith that Author, You Bishops ought to pronounce Sentence upon yourselves; we are Laics, you are Church-men, as Becket is; you are his fellow-Priests, and fellow-Bishops. To whom someone of the Bishops replied, This belongs to you, my Lord's, rather than to us, for this is no ecclesiastical, but a secular Judicature: We sit not here as Bishops, but as Barons. Nos Barones, & vos Barones, hic Pares sumus. And in vain it is that you should labor to find any difference at all in our Order or Calling. See this Manuscript cited by Mr. Selden, Titles of Honor, 2 Edit. p. 705. And thus the Custom continued till the 21st year of the same King Henry II. at what time that Provincial Synod was kept at Westminster, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and some few of his Suffragans, which Roger Howden mentions in his History, p. 543. And it seems Gervasius Dorobernensis, which is a Manuscript I have not seen. The quoting of this Monk in the Margin of that Collection of Privileges, which Mr. Selden, by command, had made for the Upper House of Parliament, is the only ground of stirring up this Question against the Bishops at this present, intended by Mr. Selden for a Privilege to the Bishops, not for a Privilege to the Lay Peers, to be pressed against the Bishops. The Canon runs thus: It is not lawful for such as are constituted in Holy Orders, Judicium sanguinis agitare, to put in execution Judgment of Blood; and therefore we forbid, that they shall either in their own persons execute any such mutilation of Members, or sentence them to be so acted by others: And if any such person shall do any such thing, he shall be deprived of the Office and Place of his Order and Function. We do likewise sorbid, under the peril of Excommunication, that no Priest be a secular Sheriff or Provost. Now this is no Canon made in England, much less confirmed by Common Law, or assented to by all the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury, or by any one of the Province of York, but transcribed (as appears by Hovenden 's Margin) out of a Council of Toledo; which in the time that Council is supposed to be held, was the least Kingdom in Spain, and not so big as York-shire, and consequently improper to regulate all the World, and especially this remote Kingdom of England. Beside, as this poor Monk sets it down, it doth inhibit Church-men from being Hang-men, rather than from being Judges, to condemn men to be thus mutilated and mangled in their Members, an ordinary Punishment of the Goths and Vandals, who then lived in Spain, but never heard of here with us of many years before the Reign of Hen. II, and therefore not fitly pressed to drive Bishops from sitting as Peers in the case of the Earl of Strafford, who is not to be sentenced to any mutilation of Members. True it is, that in the Council itself, being the Eleventh Council of Toledo, Can. 6. they are forbidden, Quod morte plectendum sit sententiâ propria judicare, to sentence in any Cause that is to be punished with Death: Whereas, in the Fourth Council of Toledo, Can. 31, under Sisinandus, not long before, held anno 633, it is said, That the Kings do oftentimes commit to Priests and Bishops their Judicature, Contra quoscunque Majestatis obnoxios, against all Treasons; howbeit they are directed not to obey their King in this particular, unless they have him bound by Oath to pardon the Party, in case they shall find reason to mediate for him. And thus the Canon-Law went in Spain, but nowhere else in Christendom in that Age.
148. But these Bishops at Westm. travelled not so far as Toledo, to fetch in this Canon into their Synod, but took it out of Gratian, then in vogue, (for he lived in the time of Hen. Beu-clerk, Grandfather to this Hen. II.) who in the second part of his Decrees, Cap. de Clericis, saith thus, Clericis in sacris ordinibus constitutis ex council. Tolet. Judicium sanguinis agitaro non licet. And so this Canon was fetched from Spain into these other parts of Europe, above four hundred years after the first making thereof, upon this occasion. Pope Gregory the Seventh, otherwise called Hildebrand, who lived in the time of William the Conqueror, having so many deadly Quarrels against Hen. IV. Emperor of Germany, to make his part good and strong, laid the first ground (which his Successors in their Canons closely pursued) to draw the Bishops, and other great Prelates of Germany, France, England, and Spain from their Lay-Sovereigns and Liege-Lord's, to depend wholly upon him, and so by color and pretence of Ecclesiastical Immunities, withdrew them from the Services of their Princes, in War and in Peace, and particularly from exercising all Places of Judicature in the Civil Courts of Princes, to the which Offices they were by their Breeding and Education more enabled, than the martial Lay-Lord's of that rough Age, and by their Fiefs and Baronies, which they held from Kings and Emperors, particularly bound and obliged. And therefore you shall find, that whereas the Bishops of this Island before the Conquest, did still join with the Thanes, Aldermen, and Lay-Lord's, in the making and executing of all Laws whatsoever, touching deprivation of Life, and mutilation of Members: Yet soon after, when the Norman and English Prelates, Lanfrank, Anselm, Becket, and the rest, began to trade with Rome, and as Legati nati, to wed the Laws and Canons cried up in Rome, and to plant them here in England, they withdrew by little and little our Prelates from these Employments, and Dependencies upon the Kings of England; and, under the color of Exemptions and Church-Immunities, erected in this Land an Ecclesiastical Estate and Monarchy, depending wholly upon the Pope, inhibiting them to exercise secular Employments, or to sit with the rest of the Peers in Judicatures of Life and Members, otherwise than as they list themselves; and hence principally did arise those great heats between our Rufus and Anselm, which Eadmer speaks of, and those ancient Customs of this Kingdom, which Hen. II. pressed upon Becket, in the Articles of Clarendon, that the Prelates ought to be present in the King's Courts, &c. Which Pope Alexander, a notable Boutefeu of those times in the Church of God, did tolerate, though not approve of; as he apostyles that Article with his own Hand, to be shewn to this day in the M. S. extant in the Vatican Library. And although I shall not deny, but the Popes did plead Scripture for this Inhibition (as they did for all things else) and allude unto that place, 2 Tim. 3.4. which they backed with one of the Canons of the Apostles, as they call them, the seventh in number. Yet it is clear, their main Authority is fetched from this obscure Synod of Toledo, where eighteen Bishops only were convened, under Bamba the Goth, who of a Plowman was made a King, and of a King a Cloister'd Monk; as you may see in the History of Rodericus Santius, par. 2. c. 32. This is all the goodly Ground that either Gratian in his Decrees, or Innocent III, in the Decretals, or Roger Howden in his History, alleges against the Ecclesiastical Peers, their sitting as Judges in Causes of Blood, to wit, this famous Gothish Council of Toledo. The first that planted this Canon here in England was Stephen Langton a Cardinal, the Pope's Creature, (as his Holiness was pleased to style him in his Bull) and thrust upon the See of Canterbury by a Papal Provision, where he continued in Rebellion against his Sovereign, as long as King John lived. This Archbishop, under color of Ecclesiastical Immunity (for so this Canon is marshall'd by Linwood ) at Osney near Oxford, did ordain; Ne quis Clericus beneficiatus, vol in sacris Ordinibus constitutus praesumat interesse, ubi judicium sanguinis tractatur, vel exerceatur. And this is the first Canon broach'd in this Kingdom to this effect; that of Othobone being subsequent in time, and a mere Foreign or Legantine Constitution: See it at large in Linwood, Constit. lib. 3. ad sinem. And by virtue of a Branch of this very Constitution, the now Archbishop, two years since, sined the Bishop of Gloucester in the High-Commission, because he had given way, in time of Pestilence only, that a Sessions, a Judgment of Blood, might be kept in a sacred place, which was likewise inhibited in this Canon. But this admits of a multitude of Answers. First,
149. Quod haec dictio Clericus ex vi verbi non comprehendit Episcopum, Linwood lib. 3. de locat is & conductis. Secondly the irregularity, incur'd by Judicature in Causes of Blood, is only Jure positivo, and therefore dispensable by the Pope, saith Covarruvias in Clemen. si furiosus, p. 2. come. 5. n. 1. and here in England is dispensed with in Bishops by the King, who in his Writs or Summons to the Parliament, commands the Lord's Spiritual, without any exception of Causes of Blood, to join in all Matters and Consultations whatsoever, with the Temporal Peers of the Kingdom, their Summons being unto them a sufficient Dispensation so to do. And Othobon himself, inhibiting other Clerks to use these Secular Judicatures, hath a Salvo to preserve the Privileges of our Lord the King, whereby he may use any of their Services in that kind, when he shall see cause, Tit. ne Clerici Juris. saec. exerceant. And Linwood upon that Text, doth instance in the Clerks of the Chancery, and others. Nor are these Writs, that summon the Bishops, Dispensations only, but Mandates also: And those Bishops have been fined at the Kings Bench, and elsewhere, that absented themselves from Councils in Parliament without the King's special leave and license first obtained. Thirdly, When they are forbidden, interesse, to be present, the meaning is not (in the very Canons themselves, that they should go out of the room; but only that they should not be present to add Authority, Help, and Advice to any Sentence pronounced against a particular or individual Person in cause of Blood, or mutilation. If he be present auctorizando, consilium, opem, vel operam dando, then he contracts an irregularity, and no otherwise, saith our Linwood out of Innocentius. And the Canon reacheth no further than to him that shall pronounce Sentence of Death, or Mutilation upon a particular Person: For Prelates that are of Counsel with the King in Parliament, or otherwise, being demanded the Law in such, and such a Case (without naming any individuum ) may answer, generaliter loquendo, That Treason is to be punished with Death, and a Counterseiter of the King's Coin. Hostien. lib. 2. eap. de falls. monet. allowed by John Montague de Collatione Parliamentorum, In Tracta. Doctor. Vol. 10. p. 121. Fourthly, These Canons are not in force in England, to bind the King's Subjects, for several Reasons: First, Because they are against his Majesty's Prerogative, as you may see it clearly in the Articles of Clarendon, and the Writ of Summons, and therefore abolished 25 H. 8. c. 8. It is his Majesty's Prerogative, declared at Clarendon, that all such Ecclesiastical Peers, as hold of him by Barony, should assist in the King's Judicatures, until the very actual pronouncing of a Sentence of Blood. And this holds from Henry the First down to the latter end of Queen Elizabeth, who employed Archbishop Whitgist as a Commissioner upon the Life of the Earl of Essex, to keep him in Custody, and to examine him after that Commotion in London. And to say that this Canon is confirmed by Common Law, is a merry Tale; there being nothing in the Common Law that tends that way. Secondly, It hath been voted in the House of Commons, in this very Session of Parliament, That no Canons since the Conquest, either introduced from Rome by Legatine Power, or made in our Synods, had in any Age, nor yet have at this present, any power to bind the Subjects of this Realm, unless they be confirmed by Act of Parliament. Now these Canons, which inhibit the Presence of Church-men in Cause that concerns Life and Member, were never confirmed by any, but seem to be impeachit by divers and sundry Acts of Parliament. Thirdly, The whole House of Peers have this very Session despised and set aside this Canon Law, which some of the young Lord's cry up again in the same Session, and in the very same Cause, to take away the Votes of the Bishops, in the Case of the Earl of Strafford. For by the same Canon Law that forbids Clergy-men to Sentence, they of that Coat are more strictly inhibited to give no Testimony in Causes of Blood. Nee ettam potest esse test is vel tabellio in causâ Sanguinis. Linw. part 2. sol. 146. For no Man co-operates more in a Sentence of Death than the Witnesses, upon whose Attestation the Sentence is chiefly past. Lopez pract. crim. c. 98. distl. 21. and yet have the Lord's admitted as Witnesses, produced by the House of Commons against the Earl of Strafford, the Archbishops of Canterbury and Armagh, with the Bishop of London: which Lord's command now all Bishops to withdraw in the agitation of the self same Case. Bishops, it seems, may be Witnesses, to kill ont-right; but may not sit in the Discussion of the Cause, to help, in case of Innocency, a distressed Nobleman. Whereas the very Gothish Bishops, who first invented this Exclusion of Prelates from such Judicatures, allow them to Vote, as long as there is any hope left of clearing the Party, or gaining of Pardon. 4. Conc. Tol. Can. 31. And by the beginning of that Canon, observe the use in Spain in that Age, Anno 633. as touching this Doctrine, Saepe principes contra quoslibet majestatis obnoxios Sacerdotibus negotia sua committunt; Binius 4. Tom. Can. Edit. ult. p. 592. Lastly, In the Case of Archbishop Abbot, all the great Civilians and Judges of the Land, as Dr. Steward, Sir H. Martin, the Lord Chief Justice Hobart, and Judge Doddridge (which two last were very well versed in the Canon Law) delivered positively (when myself at first opposed them) That all Irregularities introduced by Canons upon Ecclesiastical Persons, concerning matters of Blood, were taken away by the Reformation of the Church of England, and were repugnant to the Statute 25 II. 8. as restraining the King's most just Prerogative, to employ his own Subjects in such Functions and Offices, as his Predecessors had done, and to allow them those Privileges and Recreations, as by the Laws and Customs of this Realm, they had formerly enjoyed; notwithstanding the Decree de Clerico venatore, or the Constitution, nae Clerici Saeculare, &c. or any other in that kind.
150. The only Objection which appears upon any Learning or Record, against the Clergies Voting in this Kingdom in Causes of Blood, are two or three Protestations, entered by the Bishops among the Records of the upper House of Parliament, and some few Passages in the Law-Books relating thereunto. The Protestation the Lord's now principally stand upon, is that of William Courtney Archbishop of Canterbury, 11 Rich. 2. inserted in the Book of Privileges, which Mr. Selden collected for the Lord's of the upper House. In the Margin whereof that passage out of R. Hovenden, about which we spake before about Clergy-men's agitation of Judgments of Blood, is unluckily inserted, and for want of due consideration, and some suspicion of partial carriage in the Bishops, in the case of the Earl of Strafford, hath been eagerly pressed upon the Bishops by some of the Lord's, in such an unusual and unaccustomed manner, that if I myself, offering to speak to this Objection, had not voluntarily withdrawn, the rest of the Bishops and I had been, without hearing, voted out of the House, in the agitation of a Splinter of that Cause of the Earl of Strafford 's, which came not near any matter of Blood. An act never done before in that honorable House, and ready to be executed suddenly, without the least consideration of the merit of the Cause. The only words insisted upon in the Protestation of Courtney 's, are these; Because in this present Parliament certain matters are agitated, whereat it is not lawsul for us, according to the Prescript of holy Canons, to be present. —And by and by after they say— These matters are such, in the which, Nec possumus, nec debemus interesse—This is the Protestation most stood upon. That of Archbishop Arundel 21 Rich. 2. is not so full and ample as this of Courtney 's: For the Bishops going forth left their Proxies with the Lay-Lord's, and consequently continued present in Judicature in the eye and construction of the Law. Therefore I apply my Answers to Courtney 's Protestation principally; which are divers, and fit to be weighed and ponder'd. First, I do observe that Bishops did never protest or withdraw in Causes of Blood, but only under the unsteddy Reign of Richard the Second. Never before, nor after the time of that unfortunate King, to this present Parliament, for ought appears in Record or History. And that one Swallow should make us such a Spring, and one Omission should create a Law or Custom against so many Actions of the English Prelates, under so many Kings before, so many Kings and Queens after that young Prince, seems to me a strange Doctrine; especially when I consider, that by the Rules of the Civil and Common Law, a Protestation dies with the death of him that makes it, or is regularly vacated and disannulled, Per contrarium actum subsequentem protestationem, by any one subsequent act varying from the tenor of the said Protestation. Regul. Juris. Bap. Nicol. part. 2. Now that you may know how the Prelates carried themselves in this point, and actually voted in Causes of Treason, and sometimes to Blood, before Richard the Second, I refer me to what I cited before out of Mr. Selden, and he out of Stephanides, concerning Becket condemned by his Peers Ecclesiastical and Temporal, 15 H. 2. Archbishop Stratford acquitted of High Treason in Parliament by four Prelates, four Earls, and four Barons under Edward the Third. Antiq. Britain. p. 223. There was 4 Ed. 3. Roger de Mortimer. Berisford, Travers, and others adjudged Traitors by Bishops as well as other Peers. 16 Ed. 3. Thomas de Berkely was acquitted of Treason in pleno Parliamento. And especially I refer myself to Roll 21 Rich. 2. Num. 10. which averrs, That Judgments and Ordinances, in the time of that King's Progenitors, had been avoided by the absence of the Clergy; which makes the Commons there to pray, that the Prelates would make a Procurator, by whom they might in all Judgments of Blood, be at the least legally, if they durst not be bodily present in such Judicatures. And for the practice since the Reign of Rich. II. be it observed, that in the fifth of Hen IV. the Commons thank the Lord's Spiritual and Temporal, for their good and rightful Judgment in freeing the Earl of Northumberland from Treason. 3 Hen. 5. The Commons pray a Confirmation of the Judgment given upon the E. of Cambridge, by the Lord's Spiritual and Temporal. 5 H. 5. Sir J. Oldcastle is attainted of Treason and Heresy by the Lord's Spiritual and Temporal. 28 H. 6. The Duke of Suffolk is charged with Treason before the Lord's Spiritual and Temporal. 31 H. 6. The Earl of Devon in like sort: and so down to the Earl of Bristol 's Case 22 Maii 1626. ten Bishops are joined with ten Earls, and ten Barons, in the disquisition and agitation of that supposed Treason. I leave it therefore to any indifferent Judgment, Whether these Protestations made all under one Kings Reign, dying with the Parties that made them, can void a Right and Custom, grounded on a continual Practice to the contrary, in all other Trials that have been since the Conquest, to this present Parliament.
151. Secondly, It is fitting we know the nature of a Protestation, which some may mistake: Protestatio est animi nostri declaratio, juris acquirendi, vel conservandi, vel damnum depellendi causâ facta, saith Spiegle, Calvin, and all the Civilians. No Protestation is made by any man in his Wits, to destroy his own Right, and much less another man's, but to acquire, or preserve some Right, or to avoid and put off some Wrong, that was like to happen to the Party or Parties that make the Protestation: As here in Courtney 's Protestation, the Prelates in the first place conceive a Right and Power they had voluntarily to absent themselves, while some matters were treated of at that time in the House of Lord's, which by the Canon-Law (the Breach whereof the Popes of Rome did vindicate in those times, with far more Severity than they did the Transgressions of the Law of God) they were not suffered to be present at, not for want of Right to be there in all Causes, but for fear of Papal Censures. In the next place, they did preserve their former Right as Peers, which they still had, (though voluntarily absenting themselves) More solito interessendi, considerandi, tyactandi, ordinandi, & definiendi, all things without exception acted and executed in that Parliament. And, in the last place, they protest against any loss of right of being or voting in Parliament, that could befall them, for this voluntary absenting of themselves at this time. And where in all this Protestation is there one word to prejudice their Successors, or to authorize any Peer to command his fellow-Peer, called thither by the same Writ of Summons that himself is, and by more ancient Prescription, to withdraw and go out from this Common-Council of the Kingdom? Thirdly, We do not certainly know what these matters were whereat Archbishop Courtney conceived the Prelates neither could nor ought to be present: These matters are left in loose and general words in that Protestation. Some conceive indeed it was at the Condemnation of Tressilian, Brambre, L. Beauchamp, and others, Ant. Brit. p. 286. But the Notes of Privileges belonging to the Lord's, collected by Mr. Selden, do, with more reason a great deal, assign this going forth of the Prelates, to be occasioned by certain Appeals of Treason, preferred in that Parliament by the Duke of Gloucester, against Alexander Archbishop of York, whom the Popish Canons of those Times (as you know) exempted, as a sacred person, from the cognizance of King or Parliament; and therefore the rest of the Bishops, as the Squares went then, neither could nor ought to be present, and Parties, to break the Exemptions, Immunities, and Privileges of that great Prelate. But the Earl of Strafford is not the Archbishop, but the President of York; and to challenge any such Exemptions and Immunities at this time, from the cognizance of King and Parliament, amounts to little less than Treason: Therefore this Protestation is very unseasonably urged, to thrust out any Protestant Prelate from voting in Parliament. Lastly, In the Civil and Canon-Law, (for the Law of this Land knoweth it not) a Protestation is but a Testation or witnessing beforehand of a man's own Mind or Opinion, whereby they that protest, provide to save and presorve their own Right, for the time to come. It concludes no more bend themselves, no Stranger to the Act, no Successor; but, if it be admitted, sticks as inherent in the singular and individual person, until either the Party dies or the Protestation be drawn and revoked. Therefore, what is a Protestation made by Will. Courtney to Will. Laud? Or by Tho. Arundel to bind Tho. Morton? And, what one Rule in the Common-Law of the Land, in the Journa • -Books, or in the Records of the Tower, can be produced to exclude the Lord's Spiritual from sitting and voting in Causes of Blood? Sometimes by the great Favor of the King, Lord's, and Commons, (not otherwise) they were permitted to absent themselves, never before now commanded by the Lay-Lord's to forbear their Votes in any Cause that was agitated in Parliament: So our Law Books say, That the Prelates, by the Canon-Law, may make a Procurator in Parliament, when a Peer is to be tried: Which is enough to show their Right thereunto. This is to be seen 10 Edw. IV. f. 6. placit. 17. And, That it is only the Canon-Law that inhibits them to vote in Sanguinary Causes. Stamford, Pleas of the Crown. f. 59. And, saith Stamford, the Canon-Law is a distinct and separated notion, and not grown in his Age to any such Usance or Custom, as made it Common-Law or the Law of the Land.
152. Coming now to an end, it moves me little what some object, That many worthy Fathers of this Church-reformed, and Bishop Andrew's among the rest, did forbear to vote in Causes of Blood, and voluntarily retired out of the House, if such things came in question; nor did offer to enter any Protestation. I do not doubt, but they had pious Affections in it, though they did not fully ponder what they did: I have heard, that a main Reason was that of the Record and Statute of 11 Rich. II. That it is the honesty of that Calling not to intermeddle in matters of Blood. Now the French word Honesty signifies Decency and Comeliness: As though it were a butcherly and a loathsome matter to be a Judge, or to do Right upon a Malefactor, to Death, or loss of Members: But this is an imaginary Decency, never known in Nature or Scripture, (as I said before) but begotten by Tradition in the dark Foggs and Mists of Popery: Such an Honesty of the Clergy it was to have a shaven Crown, to depend on the Pope, to plead Exemptions, and to resuse to answer for Felonies in the King's Courts. All these were esteemed in those days the Honesty of the Clergy: And such an Honesty it was in the Prelates of England, in the loose Reign of Rich. II, to absent themselves when they listed from the Aslembly of the Estate, contrary to the King's Command in the Writ of Summons, and to the Duties of their places as Peers of Parliament: Yet they had more insight into what they did, than some of our Bishops; for they never offered to retire themselves in those days, before their Protestation was benignly received, and suffered to be entered upon the Parliament-Roll, by the King, the Lord's, and the House of Commons. I know those excellent men, that are with God, proposed other Scruples to themselves; they doubted not of the Legality or Comeliness, for an Ecclesiastical Peer of the Kingdom of England to vote in a Judgment of Blood; they did it continually in passing all Appeals and Attainders in Parliament; but it startled them, because it is not the practice of Prelates in other parts of the Christian Church so to do, and thought it better to avoid Scandal, and the Talk of other Nations. That there being in the High Court of Parliament, and Star-chamber, Judges enough beside them, they might, without any prejudice to their King and Country, forbear voting in those Judicatures; somewhat the rather, because all our Bishops in England are Divines, and Preachers of the Gospel, and consequently to be employed in Mercy, rather than in Judgment; who never touch upon the sharpness of the Law, unless it be to prepare men's Hearts to relish and receive the comfort of the Gospel. Let the Piety then, and the Good-meaning of those grave Fathers be praised; but I say, they forgot their Duty to the Writ of the King's Summons, and the use and weight of their Place. And now, to close. I protest, without vaunting, I cannot perceive how this can be answered, which I have digested together: And if so many Bishops cannot obtain their Right, which is so clear on their side, God send the Earl of Strafford better Justice, who is but a single Peer.
153. Blame not my Book, that there is so much of this Argument; I hope the Ignorant will not read it at all, but let a knowing man read it again, and when he hath better observed it, he will think it short. Some History-spoilers have detracted from our Bishop, that though he pleaded much in Parliament, to his own Peril, in the behalf of E. Strafford, yet he wrought upon the King to consent to give way to his beheading. Says our Arch-Poet Spencer, lib. 3. Can. 1. st. 10.
154. Indeed His Majesty, in his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , doth seem to represent it as if he did not approve what he received from the four Bishops at that Consultation. And I will leave such good men to his Censure, rather than contradict anything in that most pious, most ravishing Book, which deserves as much as Tully said of Crassus in his Brutus, Ipsum melius potuisse scribere, alium, ut arbitror, neminem. Perhaps the King could have wrote better, but I think no man else in the three Kingdoms. What a venomous Spirit is in that Serpent Milton, that blackmouth'd Zoilus, that blows his Vipers Breath upon those immortal Devotions, from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all Irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little Duty to his Father that begat him: The same that wrote for the Pharisees, That it was lawful for a man to put away his Wife for every cause; and against Christ, for not allowing Divorces: The same, O horrid! that desended the lawfulness of the greatest Crime that ever was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: A petty School-boy Scribler, that durst graple in such a Cause with the Prince of the learned men of his Age, Salmasius. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch 's Scholar in Egypt, the Delight, the Music of all Knowledge, who would have scorned to drop a Pen-full of Ink against so base an Adversary, but to maintain the Honor of so good a King, whose Merit he adorns with this Praise, p. 237. Con. Milt. De quo si quis dixerit omnia bona, vix pro suis meritis satis illum ornaret. Get thee behind me Milton, thou savorest not the things that be of Truth and Loyalty, but of Pride, Bitterness, and Falsehood. There will be a time, though such a Shimei, a dead Dog in Abishai 's Phrase, escape for a while, yet he, and the Enemies of my Lord the King, will fall into the Hands of the Avenger of Blood: And that Book, the Picture of King Charles 's innocent Soul, which he hath blemish'd with vile Reproaches, will be the Vade Mecum of godly persons, and be always about them like a Guardian Angel. It is no marvel if this Canker-worm Milton is more lavish in his Writings than any man, to justify the beheading of Strafford, whom good men prayed for alive, and pitied him dead: So did the four Bishops, that I may digress no longer, who poured the best Oil they could into the King's Conscience, to give him Peace within himself when the main Cause was desperate, and common Fury would compel him in the end to sacrifice this Earl to the Parliament. Things will give better Counsel to men than men to things. But a Collector of Notes, W. Sa. hath a sling at the Bishop of Lincoln, his quill hits him, but hurts him no more, than if it were a Shuttle-cock with four Feathers. Forsooth, when those four Bishops were parting from the King, he put a Paper into His Majesty's Hand, and that could be nothing else, but an Inflammatory of Reasons, more than were heard in public, left the King should cool, and not set his Hand to the fatal Warrant. This Author was once in the right, p. 154. of his own Book, That it becomes an Historian, in dubious Relations, to admit the most Christian and Charitable. Pessume it is, optime hercle dicitis, Plaut. in Pen. But this Case needs no Favor: The Paper which that Bishop put into the King's Hands (as he told me the next morning) was an humble Advice to His Majesty, why he should not give the Parliament an indesinite time to sit, till both Houses consented to their own dissolution. Was not this faithful Counsel? For what could the King see in them, who had been so outrageous already, to stand out the trial of their wavering Faith? Trust should make men true. Says Livy, lib. 22. Vult sibi quisque credi, & habita fides ipsam plerum{que} fidem obligat. But a number of these men cared not for moral Principles, they were all for the Scriptures, and they read them by new Lights: The King had too much Faith, and they had no Good Works. What magnanimous Prince would bow so low, to give the Keys of Government to so many Male-contents, and to stand to their Courtesie, when they would resign them again? Nec missura cutem nisi plena cruoris hirudo, Hor. Art. Poet. It could be for no small time that they itch'd to hold the Reins, and having governed so long, they would never be brought to obey. The Fox in the Fable crept into a Granary of Corn, and staid till his Belly was so full, that he could not get out. It is a wise Note of Spartianus upon Did. Julianus, Reprchensus in eo praecipue, quod ques rogere authoritate suâ debuit, praesules sibi ipse fecit. When the prudent Augustus saw he could not shake off a standing Senate, he saw no way, but to divide the Provinces of the Empire between him and them, and to take the worst half, the remotest to himself: But did the King think to escape so well with an indissoluble Parliament? Balsack writes profanely, That the World ought not to end, until the French King's Race should fail. And it proved by this concession, to continue the two Houses to sit as long as they would, that the Glory of the Crown should fail, before they would endure their old Stump to be rooted up. When a Swarm of luxurious men, that made love to Penelope, wasted Ulysses 's Substance in his absence, Homer breaks out, Odyss 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Let no King henceforth be gracious and kind, for he shall fare as ill as the worst. So let no King suppose to oblige his Subjects with the greatest Trust that was ever committed to men, for he shall speed the worse for his confidence in them. The Bishop of Lincoln, but two days before, asked the King, If his wise Father would have suffered such a thing to be demanded, much left have granted it? And, Whether it would be possible for his truest Lieges to do him Service anymore? So bold he was, and ply'd his good Master to the last with new Motives to dehort him from it. I know not what ill Star scouled upon so good a King, to listen to no good Counsel in that point. There was one that thrust him on, whose Advices were more loving than lucky. And on a Sunday, May 9. he signed the indefinite continuance of the Parliament, (as it is commonly voiced) and Strafford 's Execution, with the same drop of Ink. A sad Subject! and as I found it, so I leave it.
155. Wisdom and Reason were not wanting in that noble King; Fortune was. Darius, called Codomann, was the best of all the Kings of the Porsian Race, from Cyrus downward to himself, yet under him the Persian Monarchy was ruined, and fell to the Macedonians; Destinatus sorti suae, & jam nullius salubris consilii patiens, says the Historian, Curt. lib. 5. It cuts my Heart, to say that this agrees to a far better Monarch than himself. King Charles makes ready in the Summer for a Journey into Scotland, hoping to bring over the Seditious there to love him, with Sweetness and Caresses, by Bounties, as he was able, by Honors bestowed on some, by Promises, and by the gracious Interview of his presence; for we owe Affection naturally to them that offer us Love. Or, if all this wrought not, he was so oversway'd with Disdain to be near to Westminster, where his Person, his Justice, his Court, or his Clergy were slander'd every hour, that he would ride far enough from the strife of Tongues, and not be near the Furnace, where the steam was so hot. I heard one of his Bed-chamber say, That nothing made him remove so far from his Court and Council, as the tediousness of Intelligence brought to him every minute, with variety of Glosses and Opinions upon it. As Adrian the Emperor said in his last Sickness, that he had too many Physicians about him to be cured; so our King thought he had too many Counselors at London to take distinct Advice. Walk in the Spring-Garden in May, and what Bird can you listen to particularly, when there is not a Bough but hath a Bird upon it, that warbles his own Note? There is pleasure in that: But those that pressed so thick upon the King, came with some ill Augury: Seraque fatidici cecinerunt omnia vates, AEn. lib. 5. Howsoever, Home is homely, says the Country Adagy; and this Journey to Scotland was not begun in a good day. There was never any Parliament like it which now fate, that bewrayed openly so many foolish Fears, raked up in the cold Embers of Distrust and Guiltiness; Quae pueri in tenebris pavitant, sing untque futurâ: Therefore a Jealousy was straightway in their Heads, that this Journey could not be good for them. Why? What can a King do, to be good for himself, and pernicious to his People? Well said the Persians, Xen. lib. 8. Cyr. paed. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 cyrus can undertake nothing, and make it good for himself alone, and not for us. But upon their Jealousy they resolve to give the King such a Welcome home, as should offend him. O Hypocrites! that seem to be afraid of the King, when none had more cause than he to be afraid of them. Watchful Lincoln had dived into the Secrets of the Masters of the private Assembly: Hannibali omnia hostium non secus ac sua nota sunt, Liv. lib. 22. Every man knows his own mind; a wise man, like Hannibal, will know his Enemies if he can. The Bishop coming to the King, besought His Majesty, that for his sake he would put off his Scotch Journey to another season: His written Notes, in my keeping, are long and impersect; the sum is thus: He besought His Majesty to consider, that the Scotts were Sear-boughs, not to be bent; whatsoever he said to them, they would reveal it to their Cronies at Westminster, for there was a Trade and Exchange that ran currently among them: Some of them, and not the meanest, make it a slight thing to be perfidious, and will laugh at it, when they are derected: They have distinctions for it from their Kirk, which straddle so wide, that flat Contraries, Yea and Nay, Truth and Lyes, may run between them. K. James the Fourth had the knack of such Devices, who having made a strong League of Peace with Harry VIII. and yet invaded England with an Army (remember it was at Flodden -Field, Drummond. p 142.) said, He did not break his League with England, but departed from it. The Bishop prayed the King to remember, that those Lowns had been in Hubbubs, and Covenants, and Arms two years together; could they be converted of a sudden without a Miracle? Integrum non est ad virtutem semel reliclam remigrare, Cic. Lelius. It will be a long time before Rebels find their Fidelity again, when they have lost it. They have showed their Despight so lately, that it is too soon to offer them Courtesie; they know in what condition your Majesty is, and they will not take it for Kindness, but Fear. Keep near to the Parliament, all the Work is within those Walls; win them man by man, inch by inch, somewhat may be gotten out of small pieces of business, nothing out of supervacaneous. And, Sir, says he, I would it were not true that I shall tell you, Some of the Commons are preparing a Declaration to make the Actions of your Government odious: if you gallop to Scotland, they will post as fast, to draw up this biting Remonstrance: Stir not till you have mitigated the grand Contrivers with some Preferments But is this credible, says the King? Judge you of that Sir, says the Bishop, when a Servant of Pymm 's (in whose Master's House all this is molded) came to me, to know of me in what terms I was contented to have mine own Case in Star-chamber exhibited among other Irregularities? And I had much ado to keep my Name, and what concerns me, out of these Quotations; but I obtained that of the fellow, and a Promise to do me more Service, to know all they have in contrivance, with a few Sweetbreads that I gave him out of my Purse. What is there in all that the Bishop said, especially in the last touch, that looked not like sober Warning? Yet nothing was heeded: The King saw Scotland, and I know not what he brought thence, unless it were matter to charge the five Members of Treason, who were privileged from it with a Mischief. His Majesty being returned to London, Nov. 26. That which the Commons called The Remonstrance of the state of the Kingdom, came forth by their Vote, Decemb. 15. to besoil His Majesly's Reign with studied bitterness: And this was a Night-work, and held the Members Debate all Wednesday night, and till three of the Clock in the Thursday morning. Synesius spake his worst of Trypho 's Tribunal, Lib. de Prov. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 he did not administer justice in the daytime, but in the night; a time more proper for thieves to go to work, and for the beasts of the forest to come out of their dens, and get their prey. if the loyal part had staid it out (who appeared the greater number in the beginning of the question) they had cast it out for a vile desamation; but the one half of that part had slunk away, and were gone to bed. as st. Peter stood to his Master stoutly till midnight, but railed him by the second crowing of the Cock. If these had kept the wise Rules of the Roman Senate, the one part had been frustrate in all they obtained in the dead of the night, and long after. Says Budaeus, Senatus consultum ante exortum, & post occasum solis nullum fait, lib. 1. in Pand. p. 231. And the other part had been fined for departing away: Senatori qui non aderit, aut causa, aut culpa esto, Cic. de Leg. But their Apology is, That those were no Juridical hours, either for a Roman or an English Senate; Birds of Day keep not time with Screetch-owls. But these Libertines had leave to sit as long as they would by night or day. Magna sumendo majora praesumimus, Sym. Ep. p. 9. Great Concessions are the cause of greater Presumptions.
156. During some part of the time that the King was in the North, Miseries came trooping all at once upon the Church: The Reverend Fathers every day libelled and defamed in the Press, durst not come in to help: The Times did make it appear what Blood was about men's Hearts: They that feared to diversify from the received Doctrine and Discipline of the Church before, dreading Ecclesiastical Consistories, and the High-Commission Court, increased into so many Sects almost as there were Parishes in England. And as Aventine said, lib. 8. Annal. of the Schoolmen newly sprung up in his days, Singulae sectae judicio multarum sectarum stultitiae cowvincuntur. But what were we the better, when every Spark kindled another, to make a general Combustion? Our Case in God's House was as bad as that of the Gauls in Caesar 's time, lib. 6. Bel. Gal. Non solùm in omnibus civitatibus, atque in omnibus pag is partibus{que} sed in singulis domibus factiones sunt. The Parliament, which saw the Body of Christ wounded, looked on, and passed by on the other side, Luke 10.32. as if they did but smile at the variety of Throngs and Dispositions. I think they durst net pour in Wine or Oil to heal the Wounds of Religion, for that reason which Dr. Owen gives, Praef. to Vind. p. 36. For by adhering to one Sect professedly, they should engage all the rest against them. Only Lincoln, for all this universal Contempt of Episcopacy, visited his great Diocese in October, not by his Chancellor, but in his own person; Naequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies, so cited out of Ennius, Trust not to your Friends when you can do your Work yourself. A Bishop is lazy that doth his Duty by a Proxy. Pontificium significat & potestatem & officium, says a Critick, Heral. in Arnob. p. 115. The Etymology of a Pontificate imports Power and Office. They are both Yoke-fellows. Says another Critick, and a good Judge indeed, Salmas. in Solin. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the Age of Christian Emperors, were Visitors, that went from Church to Church, like Paul and Barnabas, to set things in order, who long before that were Physicians, that were sent from Village to Village, to cure the Sick. This Labor our Bishop undertook personally, to heal the Maladies of Brainsick Distempers at Boston, Lester, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hitchin, the last Visitation that was held in either Province to this day: And God grant he might not say as Synesius did of his Diocese of Ptolomais, when he and all the Bishops of Egypt were ejected by a conquering Party, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . O my Ptolomais! am I the last Bishop that ever thou shalt have? But I hope better things: Hope is the common Revenue of the Distressed, they have much of that, who have nothing else. I go on with our Bishop, who so long as he was in Place, and for a while that his Words were remembered, brought those Counties to a handsome state of quietness: Cocus magnum abenum, quando fervet, paulâ confutat truâ. When a Cauldron of hot Liquor boils, and is ready to run over, a Cook stays it, by casting in a Ladle of cold Water. No man could comprize his Exhortations in better Harmony than this Orator, and set several Instruments in tune one to another, and the Voice to them all: Eloquium tot lumina clausit, Meta. l. —as Mercury lulled Argos asleep with all his Eyes; for, says he, much to this meaning, Countrymen and Neighbors, whither do you wander? Here are your lawful Ministers present, to whom of late you do not refort, I hear, but to Tub-preachers in Conventicles. There is a Penalty for this, and no Power can protect you against the Statutes in force, which are not yet repealed, but you are bound in Conscience to keep those Laws, which are not Fetters upon your Hands, but Bracelets; they are the Vote of all the People in the Representatives of your Forefathers; and you are obliged, as good and honest men, to maintain what yourselves have done. It is not possible that all your Disagreements blown abroad should incorporate: then either you will devour yourselves with Despight at last, or Strangers will de • us all: Dumque esse putamus,—Nos facimus miseros, Grot. Poem. Lock back from the beginning of Q: Elizabeth's Reign to this day; Can you wish the Gospel to frand better against the Church of Rome than it hath done so long under the Bishop., 〈◊〉 , and Canons? That flattering word Liberty puts our whole frame out of joyur: Non dominari instar servitutis est; Many of the lowest fortune are so proud, that they complain of Servitude, if they may not govern, nay, if they may not domineer. Out of this Idol of imaginary Liberty, which you worship, you will make so many Masters to yourselves, that we shall be all Slaves. It is a popular word, but in the abusive sonce of it like Homer 's Moly, black in the Root, though white in the Flower. They that live in the lower Orb of Obedience, please God as much as their Rulers, and shall be blessed alike, if they quietly follow the motion of the higher Sphere of Authority. Our Doctrine is consonant to the Consessions of all Reformed Churches, and every Nation enjoy their own Ceremonies without opposition, only we excepted They are wiser than we, who consider duly, that they are the greater things of Faith and a Holy Life, for which we shall be tried before the Judgment of Christ, and not for a sew invaluable Rites of Circumstance and Comeliness, which yet cannot well be spared. My Brethren I here can tell you, out of Naz. Orat. 23. that Hero, a peaceable Bishop, said often, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that piety consisted not in small things. If you require more Justice from Christian Counts, or that scandalous and dumb Ministers should be displaced, it may be done without Sedition: But because you think you do not find so much Good as you looked for in the old way, you would set up a new one, not foreseeing how much evil you shall find in that: Non quod habet numerat, tantum quod non habet optat, Manil. lib. 4. But let me tell you, you will quickly love the Winding-sheet of the old Wedlock, better than the Marriage-sheets of the new. Enjoy that real Blessing which you possess, rather than an Utopia, found nowhere but in the Distempers of the Brain. A little small Meney in the Purse is better than a dream of Gold; and a Cottage to live in, is better than a Castle in the Air. First seek for Piety to God, Loyalty to the King, and Peace with all men, and all things else will be added unto you. These were the Lenitives with which the Bishop prevailed more than could have been done with Censures and Menaces. As in the Old Testament a Cake of unleaven'd Bread was better made ready with Ashes than with Fire. Beside, the more hurt they could do, the less to be forced to Extremity. And marvel not, if a man of so losty a Spirit could humble himself so far, as to speak so correctedly in such Auditories, full of ignoble Sectaries and high-shone Clowns: For, even Alexander taking the Kingdom upon him after the murder of his Father Philip, Diodorus. lib. 17. p. 487. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , was fain to collogue with the People, to get their Benevolence with fair words: And he that gets a good Bargain with Courtly Language, buys it with Money which is soon paid, and quickly told.
157. No sooner had our Bishop dispatched his Visitation, and was come again to sit in the face of the Parliament, but he heard of a muttering against him from the Lower House, not only for visiting his Diocese in such a time of unsettlement, but because he had said in divers places, That no Power could protect them against Statutes still in force, that sell into Disorders and Deviations against them. So he took his opportunity, at a Conserence that was between the two Houses in the Painted Chamber, as well to justify the labor he had undergone to uphold the Rights of holy Government, as to silence them that were unlicens'd Preachers, and presumed to say and do what they would, as if all Government were dissolved: Non minùs turpe est sua relinquere, quàm in aliena invadere injust um & ambitiosum, Salust. Bel. Jug. He maintained he had done God good Service to unmask them to their shame, that were ignorant Laics, yet preached privately and publicly, to the corruption and dishonor of the Gospel. Nay, all would be Teachers in the gatherings of the Sectaries, scarce a Mute in the Alphabet of these new Christians, but all Vowels. Everyone puts Hand to Christ's Plough, that neither know Seed, Soil, nor Season. Soldiers, as the Heathen feign, may come up like Cadmus Teeth, Seed in the Morning, and grow Men by Noon: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Synes. Dio. Sativos Theologos nulla hactenus fabula prodigiose finxit. Nay, these Praedicants were never so much as potentially Seed, but Mushrooms. Christ is brought in, Luk. 2.46. being but Twelve years old, sitting in the midst of the Doctors, hearing and asking Questions, Ne infirmus quis docere audeat, si ill pure doceri interrogando voluit, Montag. Orig. par. 2. p. 299. Christ could learn nothing of them, but we learn of him, that ignorant men must not presume to teach, since he that knew all things conformed himself to our Weakness, as if being young, he would be taught by Questions. It is a lame Excuse to say in the behalf of some of these Upstarts, that they are gifted men: Who reports this, but such as are as blind as themselves? They have bold Foreheads, strong Lungs, and talk loud: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Plut. 8. Sympos. An empty Cask will make a great sound if you knock upon it: They have sounded it sweetly, when their Disciples are Anabaptists, Familists, Brownists, Antinomians, Socinians, Adamites, anything but Orthodox Christians; yet a world of these unstable People flock after these Coachmen-preachers, Watchmaking-preachers, Barber-preachers, and such addle headed Companions. Pliny says of Dates, taken just at their ripeness, lib. 13. c. 4. Tanta est musteis suavitas, ut fims mandendi non nisi periculo fiat: So • entices and Country-folk hunt after these Teachers, and are ready to burst their Bellies with new Dates. But worst of all, these silly Bawle • s qualifying themselves for the Peoples Favor, vent such Politicks, as are by odds the most dangerous part of their Discourses, encroaching so far upon Allegiance, that they cut off all Duty which St. Paul would have given to the higher Powers. But, what if they were guilty of such Gists as some would seem to observe in them? Is there nothing else that goes to the making of a Minister of God's Word? The Woman that reckoned the Charge of her Brewing, forgot the Malt, that cost most; so you reckon their fitness to preach upon the score of their Gifts; but, Where is their Calling? Where is their Ordination? Cooks or Butchers have a Gift to dress a Beast, yet God would admit none but Priests to make ready his Sacrifice. And if you mean by Gifts Learning and Knowledge, I am persuaded if these your Chaplains had them, they would give them away again if they could: Learning is that which they decry, as a mark of the Beast; Qui omnes sui similes esse cupiunt, ut privata e • runt inscitia sub c • mmuni delitescat, says Erasmus. I spend too much time to pull down a Sconce of Sand: I have no more to answer to, but to them that bid me speak well of these and pity them, because they are ignorant, and mean well. I report that of Bernard to it, Ut liberius peccent, libenter ignorant; They are willingly ignorant, that they may be willfully factious. And through what Loop-hole doth their Good-meaning appear? In Railings or Blasphemies? I will never impute a Good meaning unto them, so long as I see no such thing in their Fruits, unless God shall say so at the last day. God grant to this Parliament a Good-meaning, to reform these Abuses, and to act it with their Wisdom and Power; for I have heard some say, that Hell is full of them that had nothing but good purposes. This which the Bishop did then deliver, I may call his visiting of the Parliament; and you have both what he acted in his Diocese, and what he spake at a Conference of both Houfes. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; as I may borrow it out of Nazian. upon another Athanasius, He exceeded the most eloquent in Eloquence, and the most active in Practice. For all this good Warning, our great Commanders in the Belly of the Trojan Horse mended nothing: Nay, in about a year and half after this, they sequestered the choicest Divines of the Kingdom from their Livings, and many of these Mechanics supplied their places. At Wimbleton, not far from me, a Warrener propounded to Thomas Earl of Exeter, That he should have a Burrough of Rabbets of what color he pleased. Let them be all white skinned, says that good Earl. The Undertaker killed up all the rest, and fold them away, but the white lair, and left not enough to serve the Earl's Table. The application runs full upon a worthy Clergy, who were destroyed, to make room for white-skinn'd Pole-cats, that came in with a strike, and so will go out
158. But the King is come home again, who could not work the Scots to his own plight, or obtain anything from that ungovern'd Nation: Here he found his Bishops designed to Undoing, and the Parliament would sit his Patience out till it was effected. An unlimited Concession ( Utinam promissa liceret non dare, Metam. lib. 2.) forfeits the Giver himself to those that have received the Privilege from him. The Houses stand not upon Reasons, but Legislative Votes. Reasons! no, God wot: As Camerar. says of sorry Writers, in vt. Melan. Miseri homines mendicant argumenta: nam si mercarentur profecto meliora afferrent; They beg the Cause; for if they purchased it with Arguments, they would bring better. If they have no other Proofs, there were many in the Pack that could fetch them from Inspiration: Or obtrude a Point of Conscience, and then there is no disputing; for it cannot live, no more than a longing Woman, if it have not all it gapes for. They ask it for a great-bellied Conscience, to which, in Humanity, you must deny nothing. His Majesty was mainly afflicted, both that an unseasonable Bar was devising against all the Clergy, to intermeddle in any secular Affairs; especially, that the Bishops Places, of which they were so anciently possessed in Parliament, were heaved at, which came near to the lessening, or worse, of his own Royalty: He knew they were joined in such a couplement, as the removing of the one endangered the other. Grotius says it was the Judgment of a wife and mighty Prince, Charles the Fifth, Caesari persuasum, conculcatâ sacerdotum reverentiá, ne ipsi quidem mansurum obsequium, Annal. p. 11. What did persuade the Emperor to think so? Not because his Clergies Revenues are at his devotion, to help him more than other men's; or that they were learned, and able to dispute his Right and Title with his Enemies; or that their Interest did legally keep his Throne from tottering; but because commonly the King and the Prelates have the same Enemies; and the Constitution of them both is much at one; for he that thinks a Bishop is too much a Potentate over the Ministry, is yellow with Disdain against Superiority, and is prepared to conceive, that a free Monarch is too glorious a Creature over the People. The King therefore expressed his Patronage, as much as he could, to that Holy Order, and exalted some worthy men to Bishoprics in vacant Places; and among others, translated the Bishop of Lincoln to be Archbishop of the Province of York. This is that man, whose Life was so full of Variety; Quod consul toties exul{que} ex exule consul, says Manilius of Marius. He was advanced to great Honors very young; half of his Pomps cut off within five years; lay four years current in the Tower, sequestered of all, and very near to be deprived of all, and of a sudden recovers his Liberty, and a higher Place than ever. That of Patercu. upon the City of Capua is very like, or the same; Mirum est tam mature tantam urbem crevisse, floruisse, • ccidisse, resurrexisse. His Sufferings, his great Name and Worth, his Service done daily at that time for the King and Church, did deservedly prefer him, before divers that were of great merit. So Synesius said of Antonius, Ep. 68. that was chosen when many were in nomination, for a Bishopric, and all worthy of it, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; It gave him great Reputation to be accounted better than them that were very good. And for a Surplusage, the King granted him to hold the Deanry of Westminster in Commendam for three years, that he might not be displaced out of his House, while he attended at that great Meeting, His Majesty expecting it would not live above three years, but it had as many Lives as a Cat, and lasted longer: And York, after twice three months, never saw his Deanry more. This Parliament meaning to sit till the Day of Doom, wanted, to their full Power and Pleasure, to be rid of their Company, whom they liked not; which the Commons could not effect for their part, till they held out the Gorgon 's Head of the Covenant. The Lord's would not stay so long, but prepared a Bill, and read it, to reject the Bishops from being Spiritual Peers of the Upper House: But what Pincers will they pluck them out withal? First, with the Resorts, Petitions, and Ragings of the People. What, the People, that seditious Beast! Cupidum novarum rerum, ctio & quieti adversum, Salust. p. 109. Sic est vulgus, ex veritate pauca, ex opinione multa judicat, Cic. pro Dom. And Grotius proves out of the Caesarean Law in Matt. 27.23. That when