PRINCE CHARLES His Gracious Resolution Concerning the present Affairs of this Kingdom, presented to His sacred MAJESTY by Doctor Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, in a Speech delivered in the PRINCE'S behalf, for a sudden Accommodation of Peace between His Majesty, and His High Court of Parliament.  
AS ALSO, His Highness' humble request to His MAJESTY, in behalf of sundry Commanders taken prisoners by the KING'S Army.  
First printed at Oxford by Leonard Lichfield, and now reprinted at London for JOHN RIVER'S.   

DOCTRINA PARIT VIRTUTEM  a device with an open book, a sword, a scepter, and surrounding motto (McKerrow 347)  
PRINCE CHARLES His gracious resolution concerning the affairs of this KINGDOM.  
MAy it please your sacred Majesty, I am by the commands of that lively Image of your Royal virtues, your gracious Son, our hopeful Prince Charles, first, to make an humble tender of his duty to your Majesty, and then to remonstrate to your supreme wisdom the sense His Highness hath in these so tender years of the calamitous and intolerable afflictions that march as it were magnis Catervis, through your Majesty's Dominions, and the resolution his gracious desire hath fixed on; (with your Majesty's favourable allowance) for their sudden cure and remedy: Your Highness was pleased in his infancy to commit the Prince, the darling and little eye of this Kingdom, to my tuition, and without arrogating any thing to my own pains (in that absit jactantia verbis) I must assure your Majesty in his very disposition than appeared the tru● character of Royalty, written by the hand of nature in the fair Table of his mind; and though velle & nolle was not then in his reach, it being not capable in so young yeare● of the use of reason; yet that strong propension was in his soul to good, that he appeared in all his actions as if he had been moulded for the Sovereignty and Empire of the world. And those childish and gentle virtues once meeting (as now by his age they have done) with the guidance of reason and discretion how incomparable and admirable they will grow, to the joy of the whole kingdom, and comfort of your Majesty, may be conjectured by this, that he does with so much tenderness and grief resent the distractions and dissensions, seeming in every place of your Majesty's dominions, and with much earnestness, beseech your goodness to accept from me his intentions and resolutions concerning the composing these differences, which certainly have not been infused into the Prince His Highness, by any counsels or persuasions of mine, or any other that attend his gracious person, but are merely the issues of his own Minerva, the conceptions of his excellent and increasing fancy. He is not ignorant (as says his Highness, and so enjoined me to inform your Majesty) that the injuries and disobediences which have been attempted against your Royal dignity, by divers of your subjects, ought not to be put up without punishing the offenders; but his Highness humbly beseeches you to make more use of your mercy then justice; and surely in that (under your Royal pardon) the judicious infant hath delivered that which heaven commands, and commends to Rulers of the Earth; namely, to show mercy, I will show mercy to the merciful; but your sacred goodness is so well skilled in all the works of mercy, that it does appear a needless labour in his Highness to incite your disposition to that which is already as inseparable to your Royal nature, as is your reason. The particular, if it please your Majesty, in which His Grace implores (for his sake) your compassion, is, that you would graciously be pleased to let no further prosecution of justice, or punishment, be used against the persons of Captain Lilbarne, and others of the Parliaments Commanders, now prisoners here, and by the severe Letter of the Law condemned to death, his Highness believing, and not without reason (the Parliament having declared as much) that whatsoever punishment shall be inflicted on them, the same will be extended to the persons of such noble Gentlemen as in your Majesty's service by the uncertain chance of war have been made their Captives. And surely my opinion in that is concurrent with that of the Princes: besides, there can be no greater ornament to Imperial Majesty, then to remit the offences of their Subjects, especially when it is apparent they were not intentional nor malicious offences, as my charity induces me to believe these Captains never entertained the meanest thought of disloyalty to your sacred person or dignity, but came into the field as it were in the Company, and by the examples of their neighbours; nor should a publieke crime be attributed to a few private men, such as these are, who having the authority of Parliament for their putting on Arms, believe in their misled Consciences, it was warrant sufficient for them to do their endeavours in these unhappy Civil wars: For the general State of the Kingdom now dissected into several factions and distractions, the Prince hath oftentimes even with tears bewailed to me and others the miseries which oppressively are did used throughout your Majesties (his royal fathers) dominions; of which, though his yet budding reason cannot comprehend the absolute causes; yet he gives a shrewd guess at them, far above the expectation of his tender years: he hath informed me out of his own Genius, Royal Sir, that he conceives businesses have been transacted between your sacred Self and your high Court of Parliament, with too much acrimony and violence, for as much as his small reading had informed his understanding, he had gathered, that the English Parliaments were the best and most necessary Counsellors of the English Kings, and then again complained he was fearful your Majesty had been misinformed against your Parliament by some, who for their own pernicious ends, affected the fomentation and continuance of these dissensions, so prettily reasoning the causes and effects of these distractions, that in truth with much joy I heard his Highness, resembling him to that young hopeful Monarch of this Nation, Edward the sixth, who was endued with an inspired wisdom above his years; concluding with myself, that if that Kingdom were to be held unhappy that had a child to their King▪ how fortunate and blessed were ours, that had a Prince, who, though in years a child, was a man in the purity and solidness of his discretion another Solomon; that (when heaven takes your Majesty from us) might sit upon the throne of his father David, and govern his people Israel with wisdom and equity: and surely we may believe, that heaven, as it hath conferred an eminent dignity upon Princes, transcending that of other inferior persons, it hath likewise furnished and adorned them with more select and superlative understandings and endowments of the mind then are in other men.  
But to his Highness' resolution, with which he desired me to acquaint your sacred Majesty, he doth first resolve, that if God should please to take your Majesty from him and us (which in his mercy we all hope he will not) during the time of these afflictions and distractions, that he a child should then come to a Sceptre so encumbered, a Kingdom so perplexed and rend in pieces with civil troubles, that it were impossible for him ever to quench the wildfire of these distractions, which out of the confidence of his weakness, and the inabilities of his youth, would increase past his extinguishment, and so diminish the Royalty of this Crown; that he should be impossibilited for ever attaining to the full Imperial State and absolute Monarchal dignity of his famous ancestors, a fortune I know to the greatness of his spirit far more intolerable than death itself. Next, may it please your Majesty, he resolves, that if these bloody and inhuman wars run thus through the body of this Kingdom, that as their subsequents must necessarily follow, devastations, ruins of Cities and Towns by fire and sword, murders of men, women and children by the cruelty and barbarousness of the soldiers, the utter extirpation of God's true Religion and worship, sects and schisms usurping the face of truth, and bewitching the minds of ignorant minded people: All which misfortunes he imagines are reflexive on his gracious self▪ as he is your son and (if God do not for our sins take him away from us) must succeed your Grace in the royalties of this and your other Dominions; the towns or Cities that shall or have been ruined in these wars; his Highness' accounts as part of his patrimony rioted from his inheritance; the subjects your Majesty loses, he concludes might have lived to have been his, and believes that their decreasing is a diminution to his power and the abilities of this Kingdom. Finally, he takes to heart so all the evils which now overspread the face of this our earth, that they almost include his gentle and sweet disposition to an unwelcome melancholy; that it may prove prejudicial to his health and our hopes. And truly, so please your Majesty, if when your wisdom shall fully take it into your gracious consideration, nothing can be more destructive to the obedience which the Subject of Engla●d (should the Prince ever arrive to be King) ought to pay his Highness, than the remembrance of these wars happening in your reign: the people who always believe of times past according to the traditions they have from their father, being apt to credit that those bloody mischiefs were only occasioned by your Majesty, and so your memory will be nothing grateful to posterity; and where they do not affect the memory of the father, hardly can that various beast, the multitude, ever be induced to love and reverence the son. Besides, should the wars continue, what insufferable daily miseries must this wretched Kingdom expect, when all places shall only be, as it were, constant scenes where Tragedies are daily acted; and for that Phoenix, true Religion, which hath long beautified this Nation, if she expire by the malignity of these wars, we must not expect a new one will miraculously arise out of the parents ashes; a new one there may, but not a true one, it will rather be a Harpy then a Phoenix, some strange compound of sundry schisms, polluting the beauty of the Church of God, or perhaps every man will be of his own Religion, or else be of none at all.  
And what a strange and uncouth metamorphosis this will be, your Majesty may judge, and so depress the Serpent while it is in the Egg, lest if brought forth, it grow up a Dragon formidable for its poisonous venom to all your Dominions. In the Prince's name therefore, most dre●d Sovereign, and by his appointment, and for his sweet sake, the staff and prop of your age, and the growing hope of this Kingdom, I am to beseech your Majesty to think on some way for a speedy Accommodation betwixt yourself and the honourable your High Court of Parliament. The Prince, your gracious and hopeful son entreats it, your Nobles hope and expect it, and briefly, as the main support of your Royal dignity and the prosperity of all your Kingdom, your people that bleed with these wounds, and groan under that burden of war, implore it from your goodness; for all their sakes, in especial for your Princely sons, for whom I am now employed an inelegant Orator, great King perform it. And so begging your Royal pardon, if the zeal I have to the Cause and your Majesty's service, have made me transcend my Commission, I beseech him in whose hands are all the corners of the earth, and the hearts of Princes, to give no less than Methusala's date to your reign over us, in peace, prosperity and plenty.   
FINIS.