A Brief ANSWER TO A Scandalous Pamphlet, ENTITLED A Speech made at a Common Hall by Alderman Garroway.  
With some few observations upon other Pamphlets of the like nature, especially that, CALLED A Letter sent into Milk-street.  
LONDON, Printed for Francis Nicolson, Febr. 15. Anno Dom. 1643. 1642   

A brief Answer to a scandalous Pamphlet, entitled, A Speech made at a Common Hall by Alderman Garroway.  
THere came to my hands some few days since, a Pamphlet, entitled A Speech made by Alderman Garroway at a Common Hall in London: and revolving with myself the strangeness and subtlety of the speech, I could not but admire the crafty wit of the Author, and yet wonder more at his impudence, that he durst put so strong an imputation upon so worthy a Gentleman as Alderman Garroway hath ever been accounted, so much a lovery of the tranquillity of the Country, and the welfare of the City: and seeing no man in all this time undertook to answer the speech, out of a reverence to the man, whom my conscience tells me that Calumniator hath most egregiously abused, and to disabuse the people, who by such a noted speech from a man so well beloved of the Citizens, I thought it not unfit for me, though a person of little note in the world, to enter the lists against him, that hath so cunningly treated the present state of the Kingdom. And as the cunningest and most venomous serpent lurks in the smoothest and greenest grass, so shall we find that fellow, whosoever he was, that made the speech, strove to shadow and palliate his malice, with beginning his oration with the present miseries of the Commonwealth which he seems extremely to pity, telling his readers (for I believe he never had audience) how apparent were the miseries of the Kingdom, how hideous the present distractions, such as no age in this Country could ever parallel, no history examplifie; whereby having prepared them by that proem, to believe hi● a true lover of his Country, he thought it the aptest way, to make them and it the rest. And so having amplified the distractions attendent in the State at this present, he descends to particularise the occasions and causes and efficient of them, which he finds (as he says) to proceed from jealousies and fears, not in his Majesty, but rather implies them in his High Court of Parliament, which how far that is adverse to all truth and likelihood, I shall in brief instance.  
For that the Parliament should be the authors of his Majesty's distractions, jealousies, or fears, is both untrue and improbable. The Parliament, we all know, is the supreme Council of the Kingdom, a body congregated out of the wifest and ablest heads thereof, for the rectifying the disorders in the Commonwealth, and the cure of its distempers: and that these men should strive to achieve those ends, and to reduce the state into order, by causing his Majesty's jealousies and fears, cannot stand with any probability to any well-affected judicious man. For certain, the Parliament to full of wisdom, and so endued with goodness, temperance, and obedience to his Sacred Majesty, could never be so injurious to themselves, and to the people that had entrusted them with the Kingdom's business, as to strive either by direct or indirect means, to separate his Majesty, who is the head of that great Council from the body thereof, themselves. No, it was the very machinations and devices of such malignants as this man seems to be that did it, it was their cunning to save themselves from punishment, being divers of them notorious Delinquents, to instill into his Majesty's good and gentle mind, those vain suspicion of his Parliaments integrity towards him, that they should seek to obtrude new dimunitions upon his royalty, and abridgements upon hsi Royal Prerogative, which how far it was and hath been from the general thought and soul o● the Parliament, may easily be proved by the specialty of their actions, which may thus briefly be cited in their frequent propositions to his Majesty, that if he would graciously hearken to their advices, they would make him f●r more beloved at home, and dreaded abroad, than any of his Royal Predecessors, they would settle him a revenue, and do indeed what his Majesty pleased; so entire were the expressions, and certainly the same were the intentions of their loyalty, which every honest man is bound to believe, before the attestations and vain surmises of this; and a thousand such idle companions: for were there ever more wholesome Laws enacted, than by this present Parliament, more beneficial to his Majesty, or more excellent for the people? As first, the putting down the High Commission Court, and that of the Star-Chamber, which were so destructive to the persons and estates of the subject, the settling the Triennial Parliament, beyond which, neither to his Majesty nor to the Commonwealth, could have accrued a greater and more perspicious happiness.  
And had his sacred Majesty gone on the same blessed path of corresponce of this day that He walked in at the beginning with this present Parliament, these distractions which this man laments so in his Speech had never oppressed the Commonwealth, nor he had occasion to have foisted this Oration on Alderman Garroway: the plunderings, rapines and bloodshes which he voices out in such a pinfull manner, had never distained the beauty of the land with ruin, nor had these distractions in the Church which he maliciously imputes upon several persons of worth and eminence in the State and City ever been emergent in the Kingdom, the Schisms of Brownism, Anabaptism, and the like had never been so busy nor the preaching in tubs, which he so much exclai●●● against, either countenanced or tolerated; which in truth never was, though he seems absolutely to imply to much, when he cries out, there was a tim●, good people, when the Book of Common Prayer was in such reverence, that none durst 〈◊〉 its purity, these are the Gentleman's words; there was a time also, as I may boldly tell them, when the Idol of the Mass was in such request, that it was a capital crime for any man to mutter the least syllable against it, but that was a time of ignorance and superstition, which by the pure light and glorious Sunshine of the Gospel being expelled, the date of that time was expired, and then every one had liberty to speak what they pleased. I make not this a parallel with the Common● on Prayer or Liturgy now in use in the Church of England, yet let me inform him thus much; if he hath ever read or heard the Cannon of Mass read, and understood the Latin tongne, that the Book of Common-Prayer is put a graft orsien of the old stock, the Mass; every Prayer in it being translated out of the Mass, for that we may justly say, though all that is in the Mass-book be not in the Common Prayer Book, yet all that is in the Common Prayer Book is in the Masse-book; so that if divers men of godly and unsuperstitious minds do not affect the Book of Common Prayer, as it now is, but wished a reformation in it, because of its affinity with the Mass, they were no more to be blamed then those of our Ancestors, who sought a reformation in the Mass and Popish Religion, because of its gross errors and Idolatrous Ceremonies: and whereas he says, That the present Lord Mayor, who hath been too just a Patriot to the City, unless he had received more thanks for his pains, is a favourer and promoter of Schisms, because he never hath the Book of Common Prayer read; what an ill consequence does he refer out of that Antecedent, is plain and evident to any one that understands Logic: for admit my Lord Mayor never hears the Book of Common Prayer, because he is satisfied in his conscience that there are divers things in it which are erroneous, how does that conclude him a promoter of Schism; as well he may conclude those Schismatics and averse to the doctrine of the Church of England that do not desire to hear the Litany read, in which is surely relics of the Mass, past dispute or question; or that Canticle of the three children, which bid Shidrack, M●sach and Abednego praise the Lord who have been dead thousands of years, and yet God says in the Psalms, the dead praise him not; and for the imputation he casts upon Colonel Ver, that he should report, his wife could make better Prayers than the Common Prayer Book, though I believe the Gentleman did not say so, yet if he had, what harm was there in that saying, when all the world knows, that they who serve the Lord in Spirit and Faith, their Prayers are of as much value, though ex tempere and rudely penned, than those that are set down by Scholars in fine and acquaint language, God only respecting the integrity of the heart; but he only did this, and urged other more calumnies upon them, to incense the people against them, they being at that time called into question by his Majesty for facts, which certainly they may both justify to God and their own consciences, having done nothing in the City of London, or in any other place which was not ordered them to perform by the decree of the Parliament; and so much shall suffice to be said in answer to that Pamphlet.  
Now, according to our promise, we shall say a word or two of another of the same brood, though of a more acute and dangerous stile, namely, A Letter, to be written to one in Milkestreet, but who that one was, to whom it was written, or who was the writer, passes my Augury to determine; yet by the pedantic phrase, it should appear to be sent from some Student in the University, endowed, perhaps, with more learning than wisdom, and more faction than honesty, otherwise he could not with such an audacious and fearless licence have taxed the proceed of the State; but such calumnies, like arrows shot upright, fall upon the owner's heads, and wound themselves: Slanders, like Snow, though it may for a small space, and in frosty weather, lie upon the ground, yet the Sun no sooner shines, but it dissolves into its native substance, water, and is dispersed away and forgotten: 'tis so with these ignominious slanders a while they may be believed and gain credit with the people; the Sun of truth once displaying his lightsome beams, they melt away like tales ill told, leave behind them no remembrance, but vanish into mists with the authors, who never would have written such notorious untruths as are in these two Pamphlets, had they not had a mind like Herostratus that fired Diana's Temple to do something to be talked of when they are hanged, and acquire fame for mischief; for I dare boldly aver, that books of this nature have done more mischief since the beginning of these distractions and troubles in this Kingdom, than any one thing whatsoever, the people being more disturbed in their minds, and staggered in their understandings by such seditious untruths, than they could by any other public endeavour, man's nature being desirous of novelties, and apt to credit them, when they come dressed like devells in Angels shapes, in the painted outside of fair and specious language, and this shall suffice for the present as an Answer to those two scandalous Pamphlets.   
FINIS.