DENSELL HOLLIS Esq HIS SPEECH At the delivery of the PROTESTATION to the Lords of the upper House of Parliament. 4. May, 1641. Wherein is set forth the reasons that moved the House of Commons to make the said Protestation. Together with a short narration of the several grievances of the kingdom.  
Printed, for I. A. 1641.   

Densell Hollis Esq his Speech at the devery of the Protestation to the Lords, May the fourth. 1641.  
My Lords,  
THe Knights, Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons, having taken into their consideration the present estate and condition of this kingdom, they find it surrounded with variety of pernicious dangers, and destructive designs, practices and plots, against the well being of it, and some of those designs, hatched within our own bowels, and viperlike working our own destruction.  
They find Jesuits and priests conspiring with ill Ministers of State, to destroy our Religion, they find ill Ministers conjoined together to sobvert our laws and liberties. They find obstructions of justice, which is the life-blood of every State, and having a free passage from the sovereign power where it is primarily seated as the life-blood in the heart, and there derived from the several judicatories, or through so many veins, into all the parts of this great collective Body, doth give warmth and motion, to every part & member, which is nourished and inlivened by it. But being once precluded stoppd, and reared as the particular must of necessity faint and languish, so must the whole frame of Government be dissolved.  
And consequently sovereignty itself (which as the heart in the bo●●, is pri●um movens, & ultimum moriens, must die and perish in the general dissolution, and all things as in the beginning in antiquum Ch●os.)  
My Lords,  
They find the property of the subject invaded and violated, his estate rent from him by illegal taxations, Monopolies and projects almost upon every thing that is for the use of man, not only upon superfluities but necessaries: and that to enrich the vermin and caterpillars of the Land, and impoverish good subjects, to take the meat from the Children, and give it to dogs.  
My Lords, If the Commons find these things, they conceive they must needs be ill Counsels that have brought us into this condition.  
These Counsels have put all into a Combustion, have discouraged the hearts of all true English men; and brought two Armies into our bowels, which is the Vulture upon Prometheus, eats through, and sucks and gnaws our very hearts out. 
Hic dolour, sed ubi Mediei●a?   
Heretofore Parliaments were the Catholical, the balm of Gilead, which healed our wounds, restored our spirits, and made up the breaches of the Land.  
But of late years they have 〈◊〉 like the figtree in the gospel, without efficacy, without fruit, only destructive to their particular members, who discharged 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and consciences no way beneficial to the commonwealth. Nobis exi●iale, nec Reipublico 〈◊〉. As he said in Tacitus, being taken away still as Elias was with a whirlwind, ne●●r coming to any maturity, or to their natural end whereas they should be like the bl●ssed old man, who dieth, plenus dierum, in a full age after he had fought a good fight, and ourcome all his enemies, Or as the shock of wheat, which cometh in due season to fill our Granaries with corn, uphold our lives with the staff of bread, for Parliaments are our prius quotidianus, our true bread, all other ways are but Quelkachoes which yield no true nourishment, bread, nor good blood.  
The very Parliament which hath sat so long, hath but beat the air, and strive against the stream, I may truly say the wind and tide, hath still been against us. The same ill counsel which first raised the storm, and almost shipwrackt the Cummon-wealth, they still continue, they blow strong like the East wind, that brought the Locusts over their Counsels, cross our designs, cast difficulties in our way, hinder our proceedings, and make all that we do to be fruitless and ineffectual: They make us not masters of our business, and so not masters of many, which have been the great business of this Parliament, that we might pay the Armies, according to our promises and engagements.  
For my Lords, our not effecting of the good things which we had undertaken, for the good of the Church and of the commonwealth; hath wounded our reputation, and taken off from our credit.  
Is it not time then, my Lords, that we should unite and concentrate ourselves, in regard of this Anteperistasis, of hurtful and malicious intentions and practices against us.  
My Lords, it is most agreeable to nature, and I am sure most agreeable to reason, in respect of the present coniuncture of our affairs, for one main Engine by which our enemies work our mischief, is by infusing an opinion & belief into the world, that we are not united among ourselves. But like Samson's Foxes, we draw several ways, and tend to several ends.  
To defeat the Counsels of these Achitophel's, which would involve us. Our Religion, our being, our laws, our liberties, all that can be near and dear unto an honest soul, in one universal and general desolation, to defeat I say, the Counsels of evil Achitophel's, the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, of the House of Commons (knowing themselves to be specially entrusted with the preservation of the whole, and in their Conscience are persuaded that the dangers are so eminent, as they will admit of no delay) have thought fit to declare their united affections by entering into an assosciation amongst themselves and by making a solemn protestation and vow unto their God, that they will unanimously endeavour to oppose and prevent the counsels and counsellors which have borough upon us all these miseries and the fears of greater, to prevent the ends and bring the Authors of them to condign punishment and thereby discharge themselves, better before God and man.  
The Protestation your Lordships shall have read unto you, together with the ground and reason which have induced the House of Commons to make it, which are prefixed before it by way of Preamble. Then the Protestation was read by Mr. Maynard.  
FINIS.