England's REMONSTRANCE TO THEIR KING Wherein is declared, the humble Desires of His majesty's loyal and faithful Subjects within the kingdom of England, To the Kings most Excellent majesty, now resident in the Isle of Wight.  
Containing the very sense of all the true, hearted of the Kingdom, touching His majesty's royal Person; but because the way to the King's ear is stopped, is now sent to London, and published for general satisfaction of the whole kingdom.  
CR  
Printed for G. Horton, and are to be sold at the royal Exchange in Cornhill. MDCXLVIII.   

To the Kings most Excellent Majesty. The humble Remonstrance of your distressed, and almost destroyed Subjects of your Kingdom of England.  
Dread sovereign,  
ITs a double grief to our souls, that we should be constrained to beg for our lives at your hands, who are bound by the Law of God and Nature, and by your Oath, to preserve them, and that we should be forced to entreat you to spare our estates, liberties, & blood, whose honour and strength depends so much upon these our enjoyments: But extremity prevaileth, and drives us to you, and c●steth us here prostrate at the feet of your Majesty: And let not your Majesty be offended, if we speak more plainly then usually becometh us; for necessity hath no law: It is for our lives and more, and therefore blame us not to speak; our friends, our wives, our children, our wants, our dangers, our country, our blood, do all pierce our ears and hearts with their daily and doleful cries: Oh that our requests could find as quick access to yours.  
Surely! its impossible your Majesty should be ignorant of the doleful conditions your two Kingdoms are in; do you not know th●t our houses have been plundered, and the fruit of our long labours taken from us; that men who have heretofore relieved hundreds of the poor, have not left them a bed to lie on, food to sustain them, or a house to put their heads in?  
And the poor they were wont to relieve, are forced to become soldiers that they may rob us by authority.  
Know you not how many thousand distressed souls cry to God day and night, in their anguish and m●sery, while they see you the Father of their country, having no compassion on them? Oh! where is now your majesty's ancient clemency? You were wont if we lost our estates by pirates, or but a house by fire, to grant Your gracious Letters Patents for our relief; but now the soldiery rob us of all, and have burnt our houses to the ground, & this not only for obtaining victory in heat of fight, but upon deliberation afterwards.  
Know you not how our blood is spilled and the dead bodies of your subjects yea many of your Nobles scat●ered as dung on the face of the Earth? Have not your eyes seen it, and your ears heard the groans of the wounded gasp for life? Is all this nothing in your eyes? To whom should your people go but to your Majesty in this our distress? We have tried all other known means, and profess in the sight of God, we know none but your Majesty, under God, that can deliver us, without more blood and desolation; and the world knows it is in your hands, you may do it if you will; and do it easily, and do it with increase of your honour, safety and happiness. What if it were to part with something of your right, yet should not your Majesty do it to save the life of your people, srow whom, and for whose go, You first received it?  
Dread sovereign, We beseech you consider, what hath your Parliament and People done, that deserves all this from You? Is it because your Parl. relieved us from oppressing Courts, and illegal taxations? Was it not with your own consent? and is it not your glory to be King of a rich and free people? Is it because they prosecute Delinquents? Why, to what ends are your Courts of Justice else? and are not they your chiefest Court? And can those be friends to you, and worth the defending, that are enemies to your Kingdoms? For your Forts and Navy, are they not yours for your Kingdoms good? And is not your Parliament, the Kingdom Representative? We know your Majesty cannot manage them in your own person, but by your Ministers, and those chosen by council; and can You or the Kingdom possible judge any more able, impartial, and faithful to advi●e you in this then your Parliament? They meddled not with it, till absolute necessity constrained; till they saw Ireland in rebellion, the Rebels threatni●g England, the same spirits as malignant and active at home, and their own lives and the kingdom in present apparent jeopardy, and your majesty's consent to their Bill denied.  
We cannot possibly conceive what your Parliament can do now to remedy any of these miseries; they humbly seek your consent in vain; the offenders legally proceeded against are defended from them, yea those that your Majesty hath proclaimed such; that is denied them which is yielded to every the lowest court of justice they desire nothing more than your presence and concurrence; and we know if humble Petitions or loyal affections would procure it there would not have been so long a distance. Neither is there any visible means left, but either give up our states▪ Liberties and Religion to the dispose of your two-long tried secret council, and make your majesty's mere will the only Law and so betray their country, and the trust committed to them; (which God forbid) or else defend us by the sword.  
And for us your people, what have we done that we are made a common spoil? Would your Majesty desire us perfidiously to betr●y them whom we have trusted; and desert them that have been so faithful to us? and to kill them whom we have chosen to save us? and destroy those who are ourselves representatively? Then should we be the disgrace of the Engl●sh Nation, the reproach of our posterity, the very shame of nature, and should presently expect some strange judgement of God, according to the strangeness of our offence. It's true, we were forced to take, Antidotum contra Caesarem or rather to save our throats from the violence of desperate persons about You; But we beseech you call not this bearing Arms against you, it may be against your will, but if her ofore your followers were more respective of your royal authority established by Law, more truly tender of your person than we; then let not God prosper our proceedings, but cause us to fall before them, and give us up into their hands.  
We are fallen upon by the cruel, and because we would not die quietly & without resistance, we are accused as traitors and enemies to your Majesty.  
We beseech your Majesty, consider in the presence of God, if your own Father and King had run upon you with his drawn sword whether would you have suffered death without resistance, or have taken the sword pro tompore ou● of his hand; & yet neither be a verse to his honour & person, or his propriety in his weapon.  
Doth not nature teach us the preservation of our souls? will not the eye wink without deliberation? and the smallest worm turn back if you tread on it?  
And beside nature, we have frequent precedents in sacred Writ, for even more than defensive resistance of Transcendent Monarchy, 1 Sam. 14.44, 45.  
But if all this were nothing, yet we know your Majesty hath passed and Act for the continuance of this Parliament: and sure that Act must needs mean a Parliament with its power and authority, and not the mere name and carcase of a Parliament; It's not only that they shall stay together in London, and do nothing, or no more than another Cour●; but that they continue your chief council, your chief Court, and have sole legislative power, which are your Parliaments peculiar properties.  
And if your Majesty hath enacted the continuance of a real Parliament in its power, who seeth not that you have thereby joined with them your royal Authority, though not your person.  
Doth not your Majesty in your Expresses oft Mention yourself a part of the Parliament? and that the Head without which the Body cannot live? and is the Parliament valid without your authority?  
Therefore, if your Majesty have formerly withdrawn from them your Royal Authority, than you have broke your own Laws; which we dare not judge after so many solemn Protestations to maintain and rule by the known Laws.  
Wherefore, we hope your Majesty must needs discern that we fought not against you, but for your known established Authority in Parliament.  
And we hope your Majesty will not deny them to be your entire Parliament; for is the Act recalled whereby they were established? If not, how can they cease to be your Parliament? neither let the fault be laid on part of them; for we all know the major part hath the Authority of the whole; and if it were the minor part, why did not, or doth the major over-vote them.  
And we beseech your Majesty, blame us not to think our Religion and all lies at the stake while we look back by what a train Popery had been almost brought upon us by that party, and see them still the chief in favour and when so many Papists English and foreign have been in Arms against us, and know no one Papist in the Land that is not zealous in the cause.  
Wonder not, Dread sovereign, if we hardly believe that those who would so cruelly have destroyed us, should be most zealous in fighting for the Protestant Religion. Blame us not, we beseech you, to fear, while we see no contradiction appear to Mounsieur de Chesne his book, sold openly for many years, not in Paris only, but in London, and read at Court, which records your Maj. Letter to the Pope, promising to venture Crown, and all to unite us to Rome again.  
Dread sovereign many Princes have gone astray through strength of temptation, and after have been happy in repenting and returning; Oh that the Lord would make it your case, and glorify his mercy on you and us, in making known to you the thing concerning our peace, and not his justice in hardening you to destruction: that it may never be read in our Chronicle by the Generations to come, that England had a Prince who lived and died in seeking the desolation of his people, and the Church of God. Your Majesty knoweth there is a King and a Judge above you; before whom You must very shortly stand and give account of your Government; We desire you in the presence of that God, to think, and think seriously, and think again how sad it will be, to have all this blood charged on your soul; Can your Maj. think of this when you are dying? Can those counsellors that have set you on then bring you as safely off? Your Maj. may despise wha● we say, an● judge us your enemies because we tell you the truth, & speak as dying men in the sorrow of our souls; but you cannot so put by divine justice, or quiet conscience at the last: As true as the Lord liveth, your Maj. will one day know that Blasphemers and Flatterers are not your friends; but plain dealers, who do assure you, the ways you have taken, tend to the utter ruin and destruction of your kingdom. And can your heart endure, or can your hands be strong in the day the Lord will reckon with you for his people committed to your charge? O think of the low condition your Majesty is now in, how your friends have left and forsaken you; and in stead of commanding three Kingdoms, confined to a petty Island. Suppose you now heard the blood of your people already spilled, crying in your ears, & saw the many thousands yet living a life worse than death, lying in their sorrows at your feet, crying for pity, help, O King help, or we lose our liberties, laws, lives and Religion; help, that you● Self and royal Posterity be not Princes of an impoverished desolate Nation: help as ever you would have God help you in the day of death and judgement, when yourself shall cry for help and pity; help, that deliverance come not some other way, while you and your father's house are destroyed. The Lord God of our hopes, who hath for our sins most justly afflicted us in You, give Your Majesty a discerning eye, a holy and tender heart, to yield to the Desires of your distressed Subjects, To return to and concur with your Parliament, that God and Man may forget your mistakings, and you may be the blessed●st Prince that ever reigned in our Land, the terror of your real enemies, the joy of your people, and the glory of posterity; Such shall be the daily and hearty prayers of  
Your majesty's loyal (however esteemed) Subjects, &c.  
POSTCRIPT.  
GOod Friend, We would have you know this Remonstrance was intended only for his majesty's view, but because plain dealing is seldom well taken, and his Majesty so guarded from the requests of his subjects, we are therefore forced to submit it to your common view, and to turn it out, in hope his Majesty may light of one Copy, and seriously read it, and lay to heart the distress of the miserable: if you censure it as the work of some few discontented persons, Know you it is the sense of the North and North west of England, and if you will promise us freedom, and hopes of success, we'll soon return it you with the hands of 1000000. If you condemn us for speaking too plainly, know that misery makes men forget good manners, and dying men use not compliments; We are in the case of the Lepers, If we sit still we perish; therefore, we will move in the way of hope, and go in to the King, though it be not according to law, and if we perish we perish. Yet know, we will come far short of the plainness of better persons and times, 2 Sam. 12.7. 1 King. 18.18. &c. &c. &c.   

Febr. 16. 1647.  
Imprimatur,  
GILBERT MABBOT.  
FINIS.