ORdered that a competent number of these books be forthwith printed, for the service of the King and kingdom; and be dispersed through all Counties, Cities, Burroughes, and Towns Corporate, and all other market Towns whatsoever, within this realm of England, and dominion of Wales: and that all who love their King and country, and hate Rebellion and Treason, do forthwith make all provision and speed that may be to rise, and take by force or otherwise, all Garrisons they can in all parts of the kingdom, and summon in the country to them, for the speedier suppression of these abominable malicious Rebels, and Traitors, this prevailing Party in the Parliament Houses, and their Army, who by wicked craft and subtlety, have undone three flourishing kingdoms already, and yet would again engage us in another war with our brethren of Scotland: It is also desired that our brethren of the Association, would keep their men in the field, and when cronwell is gone for Wales, fall upon the other part of the army remaining in the country near us, with all the power of horse and foot they can make, and we will endeavour in the City to second them to the utmost of our power: now is the time for us to free ourselves from slavery, and put an end unto taxations; we shall never have a settlement else.   

THE BRITISH Bell-man.  
Printed in the Year  
Of the Saints fear.  
Anno Domini, 1648.   

The British BELL-MAN.  
O Yes, O Yes, If any one can give me notice of four great Ships laden with Money, lately at Gravesend, to be passed without Search, by Ordinance of Parliament, and can help to take them, he shall be well paid for his pains, and have many thankes.  
O yes, O yes, If there be any more Fools or Knaves will go soul and body to the devil for an heretical, persidious piece of a Parliament, Incendiaries, Boutiseu's, Faus of Faction and Sedition, with brazen Faces and feared Consciences, having nothing but Perjury & lies in their Mouths, Falshoods, Treasons, & Misreligions in their hearts, daily Murders, robberies and Oppressions in their Actions; Let them repair to the red-nos'd rebel, Thieftenant Oliver, or his black General Tom.  
Who helps to disthrone the King, to change Monarchichal Government, to subvert the Protestant Religion, and laws of our Land, to cry down Presbytery, and Crown, the Kinglings, the Bussones, the Mountebanks of Westminster.  
Who saves the lordly Lurdanes( after seven yeares misrule, undoing of the Kingdom, imprisonng and abusing of the King, and suffering Haman to strike him) from taking leave of their Allies at Tower-hill and tyburn?  
O yes, who sacrifices the City and country another seven yeares to their insatiable avarice?  
Who helps them to pill and poll them by their ravenous Implements( the Committees and their Substitutes) for more Money to sand beyond Sea?  
O yes, Who buys Bishops, Malignants Lands? Who buys Pauls Steeple? Who buys the Kings cast shoes and boots? Who buys his Guards Coats? Who buys Sun and Moon?  
O yes, Who sends them thankes for their Ordinance for forcing taxations for their four last Bills and Declaration against the King.  
Who beats the Boyes from Catsapellet and Stool ball? Who sights with Poyer, with the Lord Iuchrquin, with Colonel jones of Dublin, and our Brethren of Scotland? Who? and they shall have new Snap-sacks in hand, blew Bonnets, and Capon tails, when the Scotch and welsh be conquared, Promises enough for present, and as much Pay at last as those that have been turned off with nothing.  
In the beginning of this Hell-spew'd Sessions, we had as large Promises of happy Accrewments unto this Church and Nation as subtle Treason could in sly and specious Language possibly suggest. We had them ushered in with a Protestation in the first place; in which our Religion, our laws, our Kings Honour, his Parliaments privileges, our own Liberties and Properties were the common Theames. We had them waited upon with an Oath after the a Covenant, which nevertheless were only to be as the passages at which Jephthaes Souldiers tried the lisping Ephramites in their entituleth, witnesses your Answer of the 26th of May, 1646. unto our City Remonstrance in the latter end of p. 2.  
We had many Pamphlets commended daily unto us, The integrity of a Parliament, how that it could have no sinister end, as if a Multitude could be voided of Knaves to contrive, and of fools to concur in Mischief. Many Plots were discovered daily against our Religion and our laws, in which ye Machiavils of Westminster, ye Malevolo's might have claimed the chiefest Livery, as Beelzebubs nearest Attendants in that kind: but they must be fathered still upon our old justicers,( and indeed they can do little, that cannot bely an Enemy, ye thought it best to cry Whore first) that in them you might be little and little undermine our King and us,; and sacrifice our Religion, our laws, our goods, our Lives and Liberties, yea, our very souls too( for ye have silencenced almost all our able Guides, and daily burn their Escripts) unto your own boundless Lusts, Ambition, Pride, covetousness, and Pleasure. These were the Originals, the Springs of your after-acted villainies; not that candour and zeal so often dissembled in your glossie Declarations. It is now sufficiently manifest by your Actions, the truest Interpreters of mens intentions. How would you have us think you really intend as you pretended, when the courses you run conduce to the very contrary ends. whilst the King and his Faithfuls retained their Places of Dominion, we enjoyed such golden Dayes of Peace and plenty as we must never see again so long as you harpies you sucking purse beeches and your implements be our Masters:  
Were we not enough damnified with your souldiers during the time of the war, but you must still burden us with them now 'tis ended? Did not Taxations then light heavy enough upon us, but you must continue them still? How could you consume more then twenty millions of money upon such slender armies in so few yeares? The Souldiers have had little else save bread and cheese, which have come from the country over and above those vast sums: ôh your Coffers be not yet full enough; Some of your munkey brats be not yet provided for; but hye you hence 'tis best you Irchins, you caterpillars of our Common-wealth, to New-England and the Spaw, after our gold you have sent away, lost on a sudden we sand you to Styx without a penny in your mouths to pay your passage to your God Pluto: Our brethren of Scotland, and the Lord Inchequeen will find you more work then the boyes in Moore-fields and Strand: Your goodly glozings and rabble-serving Collusions have been but like watermen upon Thames, looking one way and rowing another; and now you see your holy Cause will not succeed by opposition, you come up, and would close( since Money will not work upon our brethren of Scotland) with our City in the Presbyterian Government, in the restitution of the Militia and Tower; but for the Protestant Religion, and our old rubric, you still wave them.  
I pray you let me ask your honesties a question? Could Say and his Confederates have their nocturnal meetings so frequently, and not have some treasonable designs, which the rest of the Houses and ourselves might not be privy to: We may see now the reason of your Bill, to sit as long as you listed; we trusted( such rare men were you in leading our faith and belief so in a string) the ground thereof had been the redressing of the many grievances of the kingdom, and transaction of the Irish affairs as was pretended; but it proves otherwise; That, which( had you been honest) would have made this Nation the happiest under Heaven, you have made the bane and ruin of all good people: You have demeaned yourselves meet, as an aged Gentleman said of you, when he heard the King had signed you that Bill; You would( said he) grow so ambitious that you would set all the Kingdom on fire; and when once you had got Your fingers into its purse, you would become so insatiately covetous, that you would never seek the settlement of peace; whether this man guessed aright or no, let any who hath his five Senses judge.  
We likewise call to mind your other Bill for his Majesties referring the choice of his Privie-Counsell unto you( coloured by your out-cries against those his old faithfulls) and your dishonest proceedings against them; your framing scandalous Petitions amongst yourselves, and sending them abroad for hands; a notable way to work upon exasperated minds, and to exasperate mindes to work upon against them; but a way which may destroy any innocent man: While the Shepherd had his dogs, you Wolves could not raven his flocks; but since you supplanted them, what prank you and your Creatures, your Substitutes have played, we have seen and felt; and you or they, or all of you, may one day answer for; We may say now, as no kingdom or State ever yet could, scarce one honest man in Office amongst us; but no marvel: We know the Proverb, like Masters like men.  
Oh but we wrong you, you are special Patriotes: 'tis you, Presbyterians may be no further trusted; you be the honesties, there is no nay: and take it as granted, though nothing more questioned or so questionable: We thought your exclusion of Bishops out of the upper House, and bedaubing them with the goodly habiliments of Arminiannme and Popery, had been for some other end than that for which you expulsed the eleven Members; to paucifie the number of those you conceived would countervote you, that you might easilier do what you lusted, and led the left shallowlings volens volens in the trace of darkness; and that you might unquestioned adhinnire after fresh Maiden-heads and neighbours beds; Ill courses cannot endure good Discipline; for this very cause, had the Prophets and Fathers of old, Nay, our blessed Saviour and his Apostles, lived here in England in these dayes, they had certainly been made new Papists by this quintessence of villainy this wicked piece of a Parliament and their hellish helpers: We thought your Votes against pluralities had been for promotion of the Gospel, not division of the Clergy; and to make the wiseakers, the look like goose, the naughty part of them( that will be any thing for preferment, omnium horarnm homines) for you: neither did wee till now of late imagine your possessing yourselves of his Majesties Shipping and ●y●… Ports( so finely shadowed with the remembrance of the late spoiled Spanish Fleet, and your Disres of the kingdoms safety) had been the Prologue to this trencherous Tragedy you have since acted; much less ourselves should be the last Scene thereof: yet herein wo must needs aclowledge Heaven just in our punishment: for it was we Presbyterians that enabled you to your impious illegal courses of slaughter, Plunder and Sequestration( contrary to the known laws of this Land, yourselves know it very well) against the King and his Survants: who( I am now persuaded in my conscience) being farther discerhing than ourselves, aimed at nothing but bringing you to the trial of the Law for your Treasons, that we might enjoy the benefit of the laws of our Land, and the Protestant Religion, as it stood established by our Law: God forgive us our amisnesses.  
I pray you, If a man might ask your high and mightinesses a question, What meant you displucing of the Eurle of Essen, and your after poysonling him?( for 'tis certain you did so, many of us know it, deny it as much as you will) and your putting of your Scoundrel Army and their Mechanidke Captaines under the command of Fairfax and cronwell, two atheistical Independents? What meant your late force done upon our City and the eleven Members; your displacing and imprisoning our Lord Maior and Aldermen? For it was you that went away to the Army that for on them, though now you say, you knew nothing of the last Plot: Had those that were Cavalietish played us such tricks of Legerde-main, we would have cast in their teeth: what not?  
But you( or dear Brethren) are men of another stamp; yet hard to say, Whether barrel better Herring, I hope you did it out of Emplicity, with a good, charitable, pure intent, to promote and set forward the holy Cause. You would said say something for yourselves, but I know not what, You meant well, But the Ape hath discavered himself to be so by cracking of Nuts. Thus doth Malice, Ambition, and indiscrcet zeal make many men loose their wits they know not where. Indeed such tricks befit well your Independent Cause: not to be promoted but by collusion: but your transported fawcy Spirits may haply in the end be taught to be more submiss and sparing in abusing them from whom you had your power. You would said come off with us now, but stay a little, good Mr. Musties, You thought it easy to enslave us English to strangle in the birth our classical Projects, our Consitorial Practices, and Con●… l designs of zealous Brethren in the Land: such Illuminates you counted us: you sure thought our brains made of the pap of an Apple, and our hearts of Aspenleaves: Religion( which should be the Rule) must be onely a Result of policy, a stalking Horse to catch fools, and be pretended onely to serve Bakylonian turns. But go you serve Baal and Ashteroth, if ye like it; we will no popular Cantonings of dismembered Scripture; none of your Missives prophetical Determinations in their heretical Conventicles. We will not build our Salvation upon the facing impudence of such light skirts, such hollish impostors: let the Truth they teach, and your Parliamentary Proceeding come to scanning, the Turkish Alkaron, and Cades, and Kets, and Piercies and Nevils Actions will be as warrantable, as suitable with the Word of God and Law of this Land. Though you have ecclysped the lamp of Light, you must not think us as goose, which( when they are driven on by night, and a long staff held over them) will go without noise or reluctancy holding down their heads? We Protestants are not so crest, fallen, as that we shall go on as you Independents would dispose us; if you gifted men with their new learning( for old they have none) can teach us more than yet we know, or you with your new policy can contrive us better laws than those we have, we will yield, and thanks them for such instructions, you for such legislations. I beseech you, Will your wisedoms or common Sense, or understanding, or what you will call it, approve of nothing in our Common Prayer Book, that you present us with an Inane nihil, a new Directery of a noddy Synod: or find you so many deficiencies in Monarchical Government, that you should look to introduce an Ochlocracy, a People Sway. You know the King can do no wrong: and we know that by Him we had redress( which very few could obtain from you or your Officers) of wrongs: Why then sought you to depole Him, and to change the Regal Government? O, it was to crown yourselves and undo Vs. But bear ye, Sequitur superbos ultor à terga Deus, If you believe there is one, Pride will have a fall. Lo, even the very touching of the Crown hath already crushed you, hath made the People every where forsake you, and all the wil●ss and flatteries in your bolomes will not regain them, Would you not give the Maker leave to dispose of his Creature? Shall not be govern by what Substitutes he pleases, but they must be supplanted by you? beholded, ye misborne Elves of Lucifer, your implous Actions; in this very thing ye join yourselves unto Apollyan, ye encamp against God that made you; and know asuredly, that Though ye may escape punishmant in this Life, ye must die, and rise, and come to judgement: but we hope our, Brethren of Scotland will show ye the Suburbs of Hell in this World. Our People see enough now your jugglings, and how, you turn Catith Pa●, and shift off things from yourselves to your Army. Yet while ye seemed to look and run two several ways, and now ye do so again; but like Sampsons Foxes ye joined together in the tail. We observed how that the Army( when the Kingdom murmured at the Surprisal of the City) professed herselves your Servants, and your carriage of those businesses, and that you and the Heads of your Army, have since taken an Oath to live and die together: and that you shift off the Imprisonment of our Lord Maior and Aldermen from yourselves to Fairfax, and he to you again; but they must lye in Prison howsoever, they must not be restored unto their Places. I pray ye, Whose hands then still the Militia and Tower be in if they be restored, Prechyterians or Independents? Take notice my Fellow Citizens of this slur, If we should assist them in another war, we should again be bassled and muffled by them.  
We remember that Ordinance of yours in or about August last wherein you threaten Imprisonment, Plunder, and slaughter by Fairfax and his Army unto those that shall refuse to pay any your illegal( and now that the war is ended, unnecessary) Impositions, by way of Excise, loan, Myzes, Weekly and monthly assessments: though to go after the rest of levies, the advancement of yourselves and implements, and your Brats, not public Service of the Kingdom. I pray you, may I ask your Knaveships( neither better nor worse, but even so) how stands that Ordinance with our Liberties and Properties, the two wonted sons of your former Declarations? and you have the other Week stopped the payment of Debentures, and Pensions to those that have lost their Limbs and Husbands in your Service, to let us see which way our moneys must go: and your Souldiers what they shall have at last from you.  
We guess the reason of your sending away the King to the Isle of Wight; the peoples hearts were too much hazarded when he was near; yourselves and your taxations could not be long enough lived; You feared Petitions, & impeachments, if he should get power to call you to his bar, and that your accounts should be reviewed: You have carried yourselves well in your places the while, have you not? Or thought you to tutor him with a bit and a bob into observance of you, as men do apes? when you had him there, and much up in a stinking new built room under severs looks, and made him his own scussion when his fire wanted repair, and Haman bestowed some bussets on him, and all appearance of succour kept from him: you thought he would for his enlargement do any thing; but know you, we take notice what it was you would have had him done, and or these your subtle wayesed being it to pass: that which you solicited him for was the signing of the four bills, whreh had been( if you could have forced it stom him) the utter ruin of us all, and of our posterity after us: you would have brought us into worse condition than Turkish slaves; you would have had more power from the King to abuse( now you have a Rascall army 〈…〉 to enforce) than himself, or any of his Predecessors had to use over this freeborn Nation; What Mordec●ies would not have bowed to you, or who ever should impeach you of evil, should have been strait way made more miserable than Job: the Sabaans your Committees should fall upon his oxen, his Cowes and sheep, your Sequestrators should fall upon his rents, and the chaldeans should fall upon his Campels, your troops should fall upon his horses, and you yourselves would ssterve him in prison, you would find some public use for his private estate: We thank you hearty for your good projects; Be these they you have been this seven yeares in hatching? If the King had signed you those bills, how should any man make his will, and bar you from being his Executors? but we hope God in his due time will release us, and pay you the wages of your wicked ways: our Kings suffering for us, shall for the future teach us our duty better towards him: We know what offers of gracious Acts he hath from time to time proposed; but because they were conducing to our good, not your ambition and avarice, therefore you refused them, and say they were not fit for you to receive: We think yet upon your late Declaration against him, when you had before hand traduced him all over the Countries, by you miscreant imps of the father of lies,( trooping independents) as guilty of his late Fathers death, and shut him up, not giving him leave to answer it, or so much as notice of it; but bidding Haman tell him you would try him for his life; This was an honest part in you, was it not? yes, like as honest as your other dealings; you drew low upon the lees of Malice, when you had nothing left but a recapitulation of former lies and slanders: you shall have thanks for it, yes mary shall ye: sand again your Petitions to Taunton. dean in Sommersetshier, and Rumford in Essex, or some whether else: happily some body may thank you now: Will you take my counsel, and thank one another, so shall you not go without thankes: You Rake-shames, hot burning coals be your portions; when you deal so basesly and so treacherously with your King; What Iustice may your fellow-subjects( a little while your slaves) look for from you; But what may men expect from impudence and wickedness in the abstracts; from men( do I say men) from Devils, from things worse than Devils, so often guilty of perjury, murder, robbery, oppression, and treason? You cursed Catiffes, how suits this with the Law of God or of the Land, with your Protestation and your Covenant? You would seem to allege many reasons for that Declaration: but those that moved you thereto were much otherwise than those you lay down; they were the final accomplishment of your first intended treasons: the exterpation of Monarchichall Government, the Coronation of yourselves, & our slavery, which to bring about( now that you had lost yourselves in our opinions) you devised this recapitulation of your pristine forgeries, with which you had somerly befooled us all: Confiding it would put out of our memories the late seals of your Legerd dermaine dealings, and reprint in us those jealousies and disaffections towards our gracious sovereign, which in several they did before: but stay, since he chooseth rather to endure your disconsolate prison, than pass you such bills as may be ours and our childrens mine, you must( rak you hell for lies, and skum the Devils) never more look again to divide our hearts from him: you have discovered yourselves too far to regain any interest in our affections: wee would enjoy our Religion and our laws, which we must not look to do, till we get you to the block and gallows: When we looked for a settlement of our King and kingdom, lo you false your words and break Covenant with our brethren of Scotland: you provide arms and Snap-sackes, and prepare for more Warres: Never were rakehells, Buffoones, Rebells, vermin, so desperately set to undo their own native Soil, and Church in which they were baptized; but we know the reason, Yelive to well, Ye fare to full( Ye can have your Feasts each day of all the dainty Cates our City Cookery can device) Ye grow too fat in bag and body, by fishing in troubled waters to desire Peace: neither regard ye the empty Purses and hungry Bellies that ye have made in the City, especially since your lurching it out of the Presbyterians command. Ye may see if ye would( but ye will not) multitudes of thousands( who formerly had Trading and work enough for subsistency) now sit hunger-sterved in chimney-corners without employment to get them bread. Ye know that since ye took the Tower and Militia from us, and sent away our King, the City hath had no Trading, and yet Ye sand not for him home, but Ye can sand for your Taxations, as if our Trade were good. Ye have made this famous City of London not onely poor but the very scorn and mock of all the World, by your force done upon it in August; and as if Ye had not then enough wronged our streets with a handful of your scummie army; and in derision as Ye passed along, bid us Go buy more Swords for our Apprentices. Had ye not meddled in the business, but made nse of us, we could have ruled them without slaughter, and would; but so ye may peer it, Ye weigh not our dishonour nor their blood.  
I may seem a new Britannicus for thus phrasing you, but it was ever held lawful to call a Spade a Spade, it is good to uncase such Imps that they may be known what they be, it is good to discover such Pauthers, least when you have alured more with the sweet scent and party-colourednesse of skin( I mean your calumnies against our Friends, and your sugared Declarations) you as those Beasts prey upon them with bloody Tallens, as aheady you have done upon us, Saint Paul gave not Elimas any gentle terms, nor did Saint Peter speak Butter and honey to Simon Magus; our Saviour himself( that Man of meekness) called Herod a Fox, and Iudas a Devil, when they deserved it. Since ye aim not at Peace, but make it your 〈◇〉 your whole endeavour, your special study day and night, by all kind of iniquity to keep Faction and Sedition on foot, and maintain opposition even where it needs not, Ye are to be curried in your kind, and rubbed as ye deserve; not to be smoothed or sleeked over, least ye please yourselves too well in your impierie, and our oppression never have redress. Ye talked much in the beginning of your Sessions, that ye would open Obstructions of Law, not stop the course of justice and equity: but hear a little your own falsehood, and go chew the cud, as when ye receive Letters from Scotland.  
Give us leave to let our Neighbours understand the suits late in Chancery betwixt one Wilkes and one Dutton of the Neighbourhood of Nantwich in Cheshire, and two Knaves providers, of your Independent Faction there, one Becket and one Gellicorse: The business was thus, Wilkes and Dutton( good honest Presbyterians) had much cattle and Cheese taken from them In the time of the war by Becket and Gellicorse, without any Order from the council or War there; and the goods not converted to the use of the public( as was pretended) but embezzled by the two providores: now( since that the Courts were opened) Wilkes and Dutton repair to the Chancery for relief, the Exchequer at Chester being not as then open, or not daring to meddle with any of yours for fear of a snub, and Becket( for himself and Gellicorse) hasteth to Sir William Brereton, goodly Sir William Brereton, who forth with makes Relation of the matter unto You his Brethren of the two Houses; and you( all of you apprehensive enough of what might betid yourselves and your honest commits as well as the providores, if such suits had audience) presently dispatch a private Ordinance unto all the Courts then open in the Kingdom, commanding that no Lawyer should pled nor judge determine in any such Case; whereupon the Plaintiffs were sent home with double loss,( case thus unjustly in Charges) and many Threats for desiring justice; and their solicitor forced to fly the Court for looking after the business. Was this honest dealing? Was this an opening or obstructing of Law? Tell now, and call yourselves Knaves. Ye are brave men to steer a State, Be ye not? The City and Kingdom both have known enough of such like seazures: but we shall strait find a way to strip Aesops Mag-Pie out of her plundered Plumes.  
You made out many Ordinances that your under Officers should not wrong the public by virtue of any Act, Order or Ordinance of Parliament, or without Warrant, by Taxing, levying, Collecting or Receiving; by Seizing, Selling, Disbursing, or Disposing any moneys, Goods, Debts, Rents, or Profits, of Friends or others, or by Setting or Letting to Frame Delinquents Lands and Tithes. But you never held them to the observation of such your Rules, nor punish any Frauds or Misdemeanours in any such kind, though Iustice were required, but would sand away the Plaintiffs( as you would have done the Warwickshire Gentry, had they not been so many and so earnest, as that you feared the revolt of that County) with threats bedaubing them with the norions of Malignancy, and desires to divide you amongst yourselves: For whereas there was a great Subsidy granted about November, 1642. for the then present affairs of this kingdom, and of Ireland: the one moiety of the said subsidy paid( at least in most places) by the several Counties to Commissioners, according as the same Act appointed; nevertheless there hath since Warrants issued forth( which are kept safe to be produced, if time once serve for such accusations) signed with the proper hands of some of your Members, amongst the other your Committees, for the re-collecting of the said money paid before, and much more by colour of the said Act: And whereas you made an Ordinance, bearing date October the 16. 1644. for the supply of the British Army in Ireland, ordering a weekly pay, to last for the space of a year, and the one moiety of the assessment to be in corn( at least in many places so) the other in moneys; the same Ordinance was not put in execution( I could tell you where) according to the tenor thereof; but about July, 1645. Warrants were sent out by some of your Members then in the Countries, and Counsels of war, for the raising of divers great sums of money amounting to more than twice so much as was limited by the said Ordinance; and immediately upon the former Collections, new Warrants sent abroad for vast sums to be paid weekly, without any Orders from you( and yet you neither can find any Law for your taxations) and in default of payment, our goods and chattels by violence( as well to the person as goods of the party) have been distrained, detained, and sold without speedy payment, according to the Collectors demands, with a Command to the high sheriff( delegated by him to the under Sheriff) not to grant any Replevyn for our goods and chattels so violently taken away, contrary to the liberty of the Subject, and the known laws and custom of this kingdom.  
You talked of calling for accounts, and seemed to do so; but we are certain that the revenues of Delinquents estates would have defrayed all, or the greatest part of the charge of the war, without any so great burdens to the country as have been laid upon it, had they been faithfully and really disposed of to the best advantage, and benefit of the public but you have all made up your accounts honestly, it must needs be so; and indeed where one thief must account before another, who thinks any great discoveries will be made; but let me tell you( and I'll tell you truly) how accounts were made; you nominated Committees for examination( men as much in fault as the Accountants) who put their hands to all reckonings, as they were presented without looking, if they were just and strait or no; meet thus you tried accounts, who may think that those broaken-fortuned and beggarly knaves( of which sort of people for the most part your Officers consisted) could compass such estates, as they have done in so short time, and bring in just and true accounts; I trow not man: nay your own accounts( if they were examined as they should be) would prove no juister then the others; else, how come you by all that money you have from time to time sand beyond Sea; We remember how vehemently you startled and exclaimed, when some of our City would have had an account of the proposition Plate.  
You made an Ordinance, that your Sequestrators, and their under-Officers, the Collectors and prizers should occupy no sequestered farms; but the most of them did hold very good demesnes of 2. or 3 hundred per annum, and payed not a penny rent to the use of the public for them, neither wanted they their pay from other levies.  
You likewise made an an Ordinance, that they should sell Malignants goods at the best rate for the advantage of the public; but they have been suffered to take what they pleased to themselves, and the rest they have sold to their Favourites many times for less then half so much as others would have given for them.  
You made an Ordinance that they should take no bribes, and yet neither they nor you would ever do any courtesy, or act of distribitive Iustice without a bribe.  
There was( in many Cities, and towns taken in) booties seized, better worth then two hundred thousand pounds in money and Plate, and jewels, and household furniture, I could tell you where, and yet your Committees, your Prisers and men that sold them have not been ashamed to say, They made but thirtern thousand pounds of such vast booty, though it hath been publicly known they have had above nineteen thousand pounds in money and plate out of one house, and fifteen thousand pounds worth of one mans Goods out of another; but truly, how they should put things to the best, I cannot see, running the ways they did; for they would first proclaim a Day of Salt, to fetch in the country Chapmen, and when they were come, put the day off again, to weiry them out of the towns with expense, and then the non-fighting Officers would take the best and most of the prey unto themselves, besides selling robin Hoods penny worths for Bribes: this was the deportment of many of them. Ye should have summoned in the country, and the Cavaliers to have shewed what money, and goods, and provision was fetched from them from time to time, and by whom, and have compared their notes with your Accountants, ye should have examined the Musters of your men, and so ye might have found out receipts, and guessed what Disbursements might have been; and this would soon have been done by many Officers, and many Divisions of the Countles. And who but such as are altogether voided of honesty and shane would carry themselves thus unrighteously, or bear with it? These things ye could not choose but know; for those of you that were abroad in the Warres were eye-witnesses of the same, and yet ye never minded to redress them.  
After this manner have you ever looked to the public Welfare, and no otherwise; besides it was usual with your Independent Faction( though no fighters) at taking of towns to get Orders from commits( by scraping legs and crouching) for Cavaliers houses, and then take goods, is all for their own use, without payment of a penny for them to the public: this is not unknown to many: and as if you would leave no tricks unpractised by which you might beguile and abuse the country; ye devised another trick to get more of their moneys: your Committees must lend ye, but what? The moneys they have gathered from the country by loans and Mizes, and the country must pay eight per cent. interest for loan of the same. Thus do ye daily onely consult how to delude and abuse the country; thus do ye continue your sitting for no other end, but that ye may suck up the fat of the Kingdom, but ye shall see now it hath found your Knavery, it will shortly turn ye over another leaf, it hath provided a trap to catch your Foxes: ye cried out upon the King for heavy Taxes, which nevertheless by your own computation amounted but to 700000. l per annum, in the whole thorough out the City and Kingdom, which was no great sum to build and maintain so many ships and Souldiers as his Majesty then had for the defence of his kingdoms; and ye quarreled the manner of his levying such moneys( forsooth) because there was no Statute law for the same; as if the pater patriae might not, where the Letter of the Law fals too short, make use of his own and his Counsels discretion for his Peoples preservation. O, but had he made you the collectors, that you might have licked your fingers, as ye have done since ye put yourselves into Offices, all had been well enough: but for the mass of money levied, if your Proposition money, your fifths and twentieth parts, your continual loans and Mizes, and your other innumerable Taxations, your Seque, strations of Goods and Lands, your plunder and pillage, your Souldiers Free-quarter, and provisions for your stores were or could be cast up, they would be found valuable to buy twenty times 700000. l. per annum. Thus have you good State-phisicians medicined our Diseases: yet we cannot deny you to be cunning doctors, ye have kept our Purses so long in physic. And I pray you, Had ye any president in the Law to imprison men unconvicted of 'vice, and make them ransom themselves with great sums of money, as ye did( when ye sent the Propositions thorough the country) those that refused to furnish you according to your demands? I trow not, ye know it is a breach of the Law, and an infringement of the Magna Charta, both which ye form sworn wretches swore to maintain. Ye accuse the King of neglecting Ireland, and I o since the War was ended here, what care ye have taken to relieve it? ye have sent sometimes handfuls of men over to be cut off so soon as they came there: ye might as good have hanged them here before they had gone, as sent them thither by such inconsiderable Companies. This is the great care ye take of those Plantations, and of this People of England. O, but now you'l mend in that point, ye are beating drums all over the Countries for Souldiers for Ireland, but the truth is, it is to retruit your Army here: ye mean to sand them into the West to fight( you'l tell them when they come there) with Irish Rebels newly landed; ye have not men enough to spare hence; and if we should ( says cronwell) draw our Army off the City, it would follow us in the Rear, and being but such a handful as we now be, they would cut us all off. We are in a pitiful case now, to stay or go we know not: stay, and the Scots and the Lord Inchiquinn come in upon us; go, and the city follows us. I smell a Rat, the blazing Comets are going out with a filthy stink. An Ordinance of Parliament to pass four great ships without search laden with money, and now at Gravesend, or newly put to Sea. Nay, but your Souldiers a raising are for Ireland, ye have a while ago made an Ordinance for the levying of 20000 l. per month, for their maintenance: so ye made out before in August, 1644. for the promotion of that Service, but the Cavaliers took 60000. l. of that money at Leicester: Dublin ye had not then: I pray ye, Was that the way to cork and Kingsale, or Youghall? Ye fault the Cavaliers of Cheshire for stoping some clothes bound for Ireland, and yet the apparel given by those of the City for those Souldiers use was all( which was worth any thing) sold to the Brokers in Long-lane, onely a few rags that would not make money here, were sent away. A man might here go far enough to put ye out of your own practise, who, if ye had not so much honesty as to forbear calumniating your Enemies, should have had so much discretion as not to accuse another of that, which had ye had that good sign of a bad Cause in ye, blushing, might ashame ye, being by recrimination retorted upon yourselves. We have beard much your outcries against the Whore of Babylon: and your charging( with much hitternesse and vehemency) of her vices upon the See of Rome, and its Disciples, whose foot-steps ye trace in your feditious courses; but if ye would look a little into the signification of the word, and into yourselves and your proceedings: what Towers of Babel ye are erecting, what imaginations, what Anarchy and confusion ye are setting up, what Missives ye sand abroad to broach all sorts of damned Heresies, those Locusts of the bottomless pit, your gifted men as ye call them, your suppression of godly and learned Divines and their Escripts, and your countenancing and licensing any thing that favours of the Stygian Lake, ye would find something reflecting upon yourselves: the word Babel signifies confusion, and that which is chiefly observable of a Whore, is, her prostitution of herself to all, her wil●ss by which she enticeth her Lovers, and where with enticed she retains them to her: now whether ye have not prostituted yourselves unto all, let all England judge. In the beginning ye solicited by five or six several Letters Sir Arthur Aston,( a known Papist) before his Majesty entertained him, and yet you cried out against the King for accepting his Service. Ye sent five hundred Iewes( Enemies unto the Christian Faith) in your army to newberry, there was a hundred of them slain upon the ground, known by the mark of Circumcision, ye have pleased and run on with the rude multitude the frothy scum of the People in their worst and wickedest humours. Ye have suffered them to deface the earthly beauty of Gods earthly houses, to rend and tear in pieces our Common prayer-book, and the Priests Surplice, a badge of innocency; to pull down Crosses, the proper Cognisance, by which the World might know to what Master this Kingdom did belong; and now at last ye invite men to deny the Master too; Ye countenance Atheists and heretics, and frown on them that desire to quell them; nay, ye fight with them, and kill them; ye have continually during the whole time of the war( and since too, now ye might better have restrained them) suffered every Rapscallion( that bore arms amongst you) to abuse and trample on( as he pleased) the Free-holders of the country, to lord it over them, to beat and command them and their houses, where they quartered or passed by: Rogues that before mended Pots and Kettles, or begged with butter-milke Kannes about the country, must now call for roast, and beat all the house if it be not to be had: neither when such Grievances were made known unto you, Did ye curb or check the sauciness of your Soaldiers herein, but rather deride the Plaintiffs? How stood( think ye) such abusings with the freedoms of the English Farmers, and with the Kational Covenant and Protestation. And as a Whore hath ever her sleights by which she inveagles her Lovers, so have ye had yours; as the Venetian courtesans, at their first coming to the city to serve their Duke, sand out a Crier through the streets to proclaim their Beauties and the price thereof; so ye in the beginning of your Sessions sent abroad your Declarations in the specious notions of liberty, property, and privilege; and the price, some proposition-money or some plate; and even as Whores, when they have drawn in silly Shallowlings, will ever find some trick to retain them till they have brought them to a morsel of bread, especially if they doubt their starting, so have you still drawn our apprehensions off your perfidious. Actions, and kept our brains busied and deluded with your Diurnalls and your Ordinances; which you have ever studied for and set forth to this very end, not that which you express in the front of them, the satisfaction and right Information of the kingdom: when you had discovered your cloven feet in August, and saw the peoples grumblings, you thought an Ordinance for making up accounts would be a piece of satisfaction for the present; and you knew the vulgars ●… rains retain not long the phantasms of things; but what performance was of that I have before in some part( as I could) shewed.  
You have moved rumors likewise oft times, and tell us again 〈◇〉 every day of sending for the King, and settling the kingdom, only to keep the people in suspense; and by vain hopes of you, ●o retard our endeavours for our own relief: by that you may still by disarming towns get more power to continue your Tyranny, now growing towards an end: for you never intend it, you are such notorious abominable Traitors, You have so much abused his Majesty, his late royal Mother, and his royal Spouse, his Children, and us his people, that you dare not do it; How oft of late have we heard, that Hampton Court hath been making ready, and that cronwell hath been gone to fetch him this day, and that, and the other; and it nothing so.  
Your diurnals buzzed us in the ears with much good news of many victories( lest we should have set from Dan and Bethel towards the Temple) even the first year of the war, when our Armies went to wrack every where; and we had soon found it, had not our brethren of Scotland come in to our assistance: yet you sand them( you say) to prevent misinformation: but when they began to speak against you( as after your taking away the Militia of this City of London, a thing I never heard nor red before, that any Parliament had to do with all) they must be silenced till the peoples thoughts were drawn aside: we have been often slattered in the country with casement of our Taxes, and free-quarter, if we would pay one small weekly payment, and quarter but a little longer: and lo presently you have sent( I am sure to many places of the kingdom) for whole multitudes of vast sums, one in the neck of another, that we have almost nothing left: Thus have you in your Consultations, even from the beginning of your Sessions, even unto this vsry day, devised nothing but how to delude and beggar us all. and how to keep war on foot; else why accepted you not those many fair-offers of a gracious King, but still as you got more power encroached both upon him and us, Why sand you not for him home, but still delay us, 'tis not far to him: We will study a way henceforth to ease ourselves of such Magistrates, such sheenclad wolves: It is not your going back to the Articles presented at Hampton course shall now make your atonement with us: You never took a way yet to make him a glorious King, or to reform, but deform Religion, or to settle us under our ancient laws, or in our native Liberties: had you power we know your minds; We give you no thanks for your pretending to settle presbytery, since you wanted power to hinder it; nor for your late Ordinance against heretics: put on your considering Caps some what closer to your Cocks-combs, and see now if you can reingratiate yourselves with our City: See if it will thank you to transfer its Malitia, and Tower,( one of these in those they now be) into other Independents hands, and yet you did not that till very now: See if you can engage your Brethren in the City, and us in a new war, and we shall observe who be ready in the same; See if you can or dare force us Presbyterians or our apprentices to accompany you, and they shall carry away your weapons, and join with our friends your enemies: You must no more look to force or mugle men with the name of a Parliament( being but a prevailing party,) and fill your Coffers by deceit: We will believe you no further; nor Fairfax, though he goes again to hear the Lord Primate preach at the Temple, or proclaim for King, or King and Parliament: Carry you the King captived along with you which way ere you go: as strictly as you have watched him, he hath given the Prince power to contract for him; We are got before-hand with you in that; Counterfeit his seal, and make what Proclamations you will hereafter in his name, none shall believe you; We have been  told the ends of your laying open Rochester: but if our Brethren of the Association, cannot get into a readiness to stop your passage, the power of three kingdoms shall shortly follow you.  
We heard of your late designs against our City, before we took notice of them, and we hear your intentions are to proceed, and to draw up both Horse and Foot to achieve the same. I saw some of their Leaders here the other day, and their men not far off, it is not denying and seeming to over-run your said designs, shall make us negligent of our own safety, if ye know not thereof, Why do ye( to obstruct Discoveries) refer the Examination to men accused, viz. Ireton? How can you daub over this? or why,( if you set not on Fairfax in August last against our city) did ye go from the Houses to him? and why did ye not since vote him a traitor, as ye did the Lord Inchiquin? My Brethren look over Diuruals, and ye shall see him ever acting in relation to the Houses. Our Brethren of Essex came but peaceably with a Petition, and this prevailing party derides them gone, calling them Essex calves, but thankes to Face, yet delays, that if they can quiet them a while, they may after make them the Spoil of the Iudependent Army they declare against. Look to it Gentlemen, disperse not yourselves till ye see it disbanded, and the King settled.  
Ye must ever have some cloak for your knavery; when your late design against our City grew ripe, your Maior ( a very Horse and a traitor to our City, as many others of the common counsel and captains be) must quarrel the Boyes at recreations, that ye might get another colour to draw your Army again upon the city, and do that which then ye durst not, get down our chains, that when the time of your necessity came, ye might disarm us, command our purses, and force us and our servants against our consciences, though now again ye are forced to pull in horns; and bring ye up your County Souldiers( as we hear ye have) we shall make ye aching hearts yer ye obtain your wils: ye are loathe to leave us; but( since we know your good will) well shall look to ye as we can: We trust our Brethren of the Association will be ready to assist us. We have heard now of your private compliance with Irish Natives, and your Letters lately taken at Sea, wherein ye promite liberty of conscience, and many immunities, if they will let ye alone. Thus have I given you a little sight of the Babylouian Bel like Idol, A brazen Parliament, and of the collusion and voracity of the Idol attendants, this prevailing party of both Houses, who have so long deluded ye with devices, and like Belt priests wasted upon themselves and theirs those vast Contributions and levies which should have been expended on the public Service; and do desire( now time is like to serve for it) ye would endeavour your own freedom from the yoke of these men.  
God save the King and kingdom.  
FINIS.