ENGLAND'S HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE TO THEIR KING And to their PARLIAMENT: SHOWING The Cause of this bloody and destructive War by the KING against his Parliament and People.  O Lord let not the KING be unto thy People the rod of thy fierce wrath. Printed according to Order. 
London, Printed for G. L. 1643.   

His Majesty's Cause of this War is either just or unjust, or dubious, viz. partly just, and partly unjust.  
1. WE will first suppose his Majesty's Cause to be just, that he has only the defensive part, and is necessitated to fight; and that the Parliament, as yet, hath offered no terms of Accommodation to him, but such as are more unjust than all the plagues of this calamitous war.  
This so being supposed, makes him innocent, but yet most unfortunate; it makes him the first man that ever fortune picked out to engage in such a wretched destruction of men and treasure without blame; amongst all his Ancestors, there will not appear upon search one of them who was just, and maintained a just cause, and yet met with such general opposition from his Subjects, much less from the Lords and Commons assembled in a Parliament.  
How trivial soever the King's side accounts this, there was not ever a worse prodigy in the World to amaze any State, than this is, if it be true, that the orderly representative body of this nation, has, causelessly and unnaturally, risen up against their righteous King to pursue him so fare as ours now is.  
It is not to be denied, but that some Parliaments have done some unjust things, when they have been wrought upon by the force and fraud of Princes; but no Example can be showed, that ever any Parliament did such an unjust thing as this, contrary to all motives and influences of a gracious and religious Prince.  
Some of the King's party have argued thus; If Parliaments may err when they are perfect, having the concurrence of the royal State with them, much more may they err when the royal State recedes from them, etc.  
But this I hold a grand mistake; for if I have any reason to make a right use of story, Parliaments are repesented to me never less liable to error, then when they receive least impressions from the King. With what regret then ought the King to look upon this unprecedented disaster? Certainly if he look upon us with a natural eye, under such unparallelled sufferings, or upon himself with a pious eye under such an unequal affliction, it cannot but administer thoughts of honour to him; bonus pastor ponit vitam pro ovilius, so said that Prince of Peace in whom only there was no sin, and in whose flock jointly and severally taken there was nothing else but sin; and yet his death sealed as much as his mouth affirmed. Moses seemed to prefer the welfare of the obstinate Jews, not only before all his temporal interests, but also before his eternal diadem in Heaven; and Saint Paul seemed to be rapt up with a species of the same Zeal.  
The passions of some heathen and heretical Princes towards their liege Subjects have been almost above the pitch of humanity: With what a wrang kind of hypochondriacal frenzy did Augustus Caesar cry out, Red mihi Legiones vare? If the blood of his Subjects had been drawn forcibly out of his own dearest Veins, it could not have parted from him with a stronger resentment. How did our Queen Mary even to to the death, deplore the loss of one Town in Picardy? With what strange Instruments did grief make incision in her heart, whilst it would engrave the name of Calais there?  
The loss of all Kings in all wars uses to be very dolorous: but native Kings in civil Wars when they look upon such vast desolation, as is now to be seen in England and Ireland, must needs think that their own interest, their own honour, their own safety, is of less consequence.  
2 We will now suppose the King's Cause to be unjust, that the Parliament has had none but loyal intentions towards him and his royal Dignity, nor has attempted any thing but to defend Religion against the Papists, the Laws of the Land against Delinquents, and the Privileges of both Houses against Malignants; and on the contrary we will suppose, that that private Counsel which the King has follwed rather than his public owne, has aimed at the Arbitrary rule of France, and to effect the same has countenanced Popery, and but pretended danger from the Parliament, from the City of London, and from the best affected of the whole Kingdom: Qui supponit non ponit: We will not assume, but presume only, that the great Counsel of the Land is in the right rather than the King and his claudestine Counsel; but see what will follow upon this supposition, if it prove to be true, as it is neither impossible nor improbable; if this be true, what a formidable day is that to be wherein the King shall render a strict account for all the English Protestant blood which has been issued out, and is to be yet issued out in this wicked and unnatural quarrel? Manasseh which filled Jerusalem with blood, and made the Channels thereof flow with the precious blood of Saints, could not contract so black a guilt, as he that imbrewes two large Kingdoms with blood, and that with the blood of the best reformed Professors of our Saviour's Gospel. That blood of Protestants which has been shed by Papists, as in the Parisian Massacree; that blood of Christians which has been shed by Infidels, as in Turkey; that blood of Saints which has been shed by Heretics, as in the Arian Emperors days; that blood of strangers which has been shed by conquering Usurpers, as in Peru of late, may admit of some colour or excuse as to some degree of heinousness, and may plead for some kind of Expiation; but this is beyond all thought or expression.  
The goodly Kingdom of Ireland is almost converted into a Golgotha, and the more goodly Kingdom of England is hasting to a worse point of desolation. It must needs be therefore, that he to whose cruelty and injustice so much confusion shall be imputed, must be perpetually abominated as a plague of humane kind, more monstrous and portentous, than any age formerly had the strength to produce. The ripping up of a Mother's womb, the fitting of such a Metropolis as Rome was, were but strains of vulgar narrow-hearted cruelty; Antichrist himself may own the depopulation and vastation of our British Islands, as acts worthy of his dying fury.  
3 But it remains now in the last place, that we suppose some doubt to be in the Case, or some mixture of injustice in some circumstances: as that though the King incline not at all to Popery himself, yet he has favoured and enabled Papists too far to do mischief; and though he cannot with safety cast himself wholly upon the fidelity of the Parliament, yet he has no cause utterly to reject their consent, and approbation in the filling up of all places of public power and trust as the emergent necessity of the times now is, nor to persist in this al-consuming war rather than to condescend to an Accommodation; if we lay down this for supposed, we must needs conclude that the King has not punctually, and duly discharged his Office, so as that he can clearly acquit and absolve himself before God of this lamentable effusion of Christian blood; for there must not only be a perspicuous justice in the Cause, but an absolute necessity of the war when Kings take up the sword against such a considerable number of their Subjects, as our King now fights against.  
Though the Cause may be just, yet the war is not lawful where the miserable consequences of it do too fare out-ballance the iniquity of the conditions offered and proposed by the assailed party. Wherefore, if the mere and clear justice of a Cause cannot always wipe off guilt, how shall he be purged from offence whose Cause is not totally just, nor undeniably evident in a war of this nature? If the King does not apparently fight for Antichrist, yet 'tis most apparent that Antichrist does fight for the King; the whole Hirarchy has declared their engagement by publishing Bulls and by sending supplies into Ireland and England out of several Popish Countries.  
On the other side, if the Earl of Essex does not apparently fight for Christ, yet it seems very probable that Christ fights for him; for our great Armies within the Circle of the last year have four times met, and still the King, side hath gone off with loss and disadvantage. Redding being begirt with his Excellency's Forces, all his Majesty's power could not relieve it; yet Gloucester being begirt by his Majesty's Forces, his Excellency found means to relieve it. And as for Edge-hill and Newberry, though neither side was totally routed, yet the mastery of the field was left to his Excellency; and had not fraud done better service to the King than force, scarce any other encounters in other parts had been prosperous to his Popish Armies.  
These things seem to make the King's Cause at lest dubious, for it were strange if in these latter days Christ and Antichrist should be so fare reconciled in any one Cause, as to unite their battles in the same Expedition, or to pitch their Tents in the same field; and grant any doubt in this Case, and the King can never be capable of justification in prosecuting it so far with fire and sword; for the King has already sworn to uphold and preserve in their entire vigour the Laws of the Land, and the Privileges of Parliament; and we cannot deny, but even this doubt might be decided by the Laws in Parliament, or by some other Judicatory out of Parliament, if the King would refer it to such a decision, if the King will admit of no Judicatory to determine this matter, what are all our Laws and Privileges worth? If he will admit of one but doubts what it is, and will not be resolved by his Parliament in that doubt, what will all his oaths profit us? what will all his deep professions of favour to our Laws and Privileges stand us in stead? Nay, when the King is not certain of victory, and yet hath by so many dreadful oaths debarred himself from ill advantages by victory, if this devouring war (wherein so much loss is, and no gain at all to countervail it) be still protracted, and preferred before a just Peace, all these inexpiable mischiefs will be charged upon him, and future ages must needs suspect, that love of ruin and destruction, and a perfect hatred to the very nature and being of man, was the execrable cause of it.  
Imprimat.  
Ja. Cranford.  
FINIS.