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.  
London Printed, 1641.   

The Speech of Master Hollis Esquire.  
My Lords,  
THe Knights, and Burgesses, of the house of Commons, having taken into consideration the present estate and condition of this Kingdom, they find ●●surrounded with variety of pernitions and dostructory designs, practices and plots, against the well-being of it, nay, the very 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 subvertiour Laws and liberties, they find obstructions of justice, which is the life and blood of every estate, and having free passage from the Sovereign power, where it is primarily seated as the life and blood in the heart, and thence derived through the judicatories, on through so many veins into all the parts of this great Collective Body, doth give warmth and motion to every part and member which is: nourished and enlivened by it, but being once precluded, stopped, and reared up, as the particular must needs faint, and languish, so must the whole frame of Government be dislolved.  
And consequently, Sovereignty itself which (as the heart in the body, is primum vivens, & altimum moriens, must die and perish in the general dissolution, and all things as in the beginning in antiquum Chaos.  
My Lords, They find the property of the subject invaded and violated, his estate rend 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 th●● 〈…〉 impoverish good subjects, to take the Mess 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, cates through, and sucks and gnaws our very hearts out. Hic Dolour, sed ub● Medicina?  
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 been like the figtree in the Gospel, without efficacy, without fruit, only destructive to their particular members, who discharged their duties and consciences, no way benesiciall to the Commonwealth. Nobis exitiale, nec Reipublicae profuturum, As he said in Tacitus, being taken away still as Elias was with a whirlwind, never coming to any maturity, or to their natural end, whereas they should be like the blessed old man, who dyeth, plenus dierum, in a full age after he had fought a good sight, and overcome 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 panis 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 been still against us. The same ill Counsel which first raised the storm, and almost shipwrackt the Commonwealth, they still continue, they blow strong like the East wind that brought the Locusts over our Counsels, cross our designs, cast difficulties in our way, hinder our proceed, and make all that we do to be fruitless and ineffectual: They make us not masters of our business, and so not masters of money, 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 than my Lords, that we should unite and concentrate ourselves, in regard of this Antiperistasis, 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 conjuncture of our affairs, for one main engine by which our enemies work our mischief, is by infusing an opinion and belief into the world, that we are not united among ourselves. But like Sampsons' 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, and 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 & 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 association 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 brought upon us all these misceries, 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 reasons 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 M. Maynard.  
FINIS.