THE CHARACTER OF A COUNTRY Committee-man, With the Eare-marke of a SEQUESTRATOR.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1649. August. 21   

MADAM,  
NEver were the Scales so even between presumption and despair as they are now poised in the aspiring votary, for as the height of your Judgement makes me justly diffident of my unworthy offering, so I am assured your censure will relent in pardon; when you look upon it as an error of devotion, the same alter which disdains the acceptance of my blemished sacrifice, will nevertheless give refuges and protection to your grovelling offenders: Madam, It is a violation of your worth, to present you with vanities, all sacrilege is not dressed after the fashionable cut of this age, in Rapine and Robbery, it may be committed in giving, where the gift is a demunition and by a scandalous homeliness, profaneness, as it were the very consecration, but I will not traverse your Ladyship's commands by pleading the meanness of the trifle you have deigned to require, I am resolved to obey you at all adventures, and with the loss both of credit and modesty to enhance my observance, let others in their addresses seek after fame, and by choosing Honourable Gossips to their petty Issue, drive a lustre from their Dedications, my endeavours are of a more bashful Mode, then to ask blessing of the sun, yet since your Ladyship's summons hath been pleased to entitle them to a room in your Cabinet, that Cabinet which alone is Theatre sufficient for all the rarities and perfections of the Age, they shall attend you Madam, but striped of all interest since a sincere obedience, as you may see by my enclosed Committee-man, who is so void of Ornament that he seems to be shaped, after his new Model of self denial, Madam it is a British tribute that Antiquity paid in the head of wolves, how aptly this present of the Committee-man revives the Custom; for as his ravenous nature hath a near alliance with that of the other, so nonefitter to return to the first fruits, of his tributary punishment.  
Than your Ladyship who have suffered so much by the savage Beast in your worryed fortune, in which my attempt of vindicative Justice, if my abilities have not kept pace with my desire, if my revenge be not as keen and poignant as the malice of my subject, it will be your Charity to imagine that I was dull upon design, and did industriouslly rebate my Edge to prolong the Torment of his execution, I desire Madam, let me be your suppliant in this, that when you have guilded the Paper with the beams of your proposal, you will confine it after to shade and solitude, both because Satyrs like Bandog acquire a fiercenss by being tied up, and withal because it is the opinion of your servant that published Compositions are but so many Breves that wander for the Al●●●…s of approbation.  
MADAM, He that with reverence admires your virtues. I: C.   

The Character of a Country Committee Man with the Eare-marke of a Sequestrator.  
A Committee man by his name should be one that is possessed, that's number enough in the compellation to make it an Epithet for Legion; he is persona in concreto (to borrow the Solecism of a modern Statesman) you may translate it by the red bull phrase and speak as properly, enter seven devils solus, It is a well trust title that contains both the number and the beast. For a Committee-man is a noun of Multitude, he must be spelled with figures, like Antichrist wrapped in a pair, Royal of Six, thus the name is as monstrous as the man, a complete notion of the same lineage with accomulative treason, for his office, it is the resurrection of the Heptarchy or England fritters, it is the broken meat of a Crumbling Prince, only the Royalty is greater, for it is here, as in the miracle of Loaves the voider exceeds the Bill of fare, the Pope and he rings the Changes; here is a plurality of Crowns to one head, Join them together and there's harmony in discord, the Triple crowned Turn-Key of Heaven, with the triple headed porter of hell, A Committee-man is the relics of Regal Government, but like holy relics he out bulks the substance whereof he is a remnant, there's a score of Rings in a Committee as in the relics of the Cross, there's the number of twenty, This is the Giant with the hundred hands that wields the Sceptre, the tyrannical Beade-Roule by which the Kingdom prays backward, and with a kind of Rebus at every Curse drops a Committee man, Let CHARLES be waned whose conducing clemency aggravates the defection, and make Nero the question, better a Nero then a Committee, there's less examination by a single Bullet then by case shot.  
Now a Committee-man is a party coloured officer, he must be drawn like Janus with Cross and Pile in his countenance, as he relates to the Soldiers, or face about to his fleecing the Country, look upon him Martially and he is a Justice of War.  
One that hath bound his Dalton up in Buff, and will needs be of the quorum to the best Commanders, he is one of Mars his Lay Elders, he shares in the Government, though a Nonconformist to his bleeding Rubick, he is the like Sectary in Arms as the Platonic is in love, keep a flattering in discourse but proves haggard in the action; he is not of the Soldiers and yet of his flock, it is an emblem of the golden age (and such indeed he makes it) to him, when so tame a Pigeon may commerce with vultures, Me thinks a Committee hanging about a Governor and Bandleirs, dangling about furred Alderman have an Anagram resemblance, there's no Syntax between a Cap of maintenance and a helmet, who ever knew an enemy routed by a Grand Jury, and a billa vera: it is a left handed Garrison where their authority perches, but the more preposterous the more in fashion the right hand fights while the left rules the Reins, the truth is the Soldier and the Gentleman are like Don Quicchott and Sancho Pancha one fights at all adventures to purchase the other, the Government of the Island, a Committe-man properly should be the Governor Natrosse to fit his tackle, and to new string him with sinews of War for his chief use to raise assessments in the neighbouring Wapentake.  
The Country people being like an Irish Cow, that will not give down the Milk unless she see her Calf before her: hence it is, he is the Garrisons dry Nurse, he chews their Contribution before he feeds them, so the poor Soldiers live like Trochilus by picking the teeth of this sated Crocoadile.  
So much for his warlike or ammunition face which is so preturnaturall that it is rather a vizard then a face, Mars in him hath but a blinking aspect, his face of Arms is like his Coat party per pale, Soldier and Gentleman much of a scantling.  
Now enter his Taxing and deglubing face, a squeezing look like that of Vespasians as if he were breeding over a closestoole. Take him thus and he is the Inquisition of the purse, an Auchentick Gipsy, that Nips your bung with a canting Ordinance, not a murdered fortune in all the Country but bleeds at the touch of this malefactor, he is the spleen of the body politic that swells itself to the consumption of the whole, at first indeed he ferretted for the Parliament, but since he hath got of his Cope, he set up for himself, he lives upon the sins of the people, and that's a good standing dish too, he verifies the Axiom Eisdom mutritur ex quibus componiter, his diet is suitable to his constitution, I have wondered often why the plundered Countrymen should repair to him for succour, certainly it is under the same notion as one whose pockets are picked goes to Moll: Cutpurse as the predominant in that faculty.  
He out dives a Dutchman, gets a noble of him that was never worth six pence, for the poorest escape not, but Dutch like he will be dreyning even in the driest ground, he Aliens a Delinquents Estate with as little remorse as his other holiness gives away an Heretics Kingdom, and for the truth of the Delinquency, both Chapmen have a little share of infallibility, Lye is the Grand Salad of Arbitrary Government, Executor to the Star-Chamber, and High-Commission for those Courts are not extinct, they survive in him like Dollary changed into single moneys, to speak the truth he's the universal tribunal for since these times, all causes fall to his Cognizance, as in a great infection diseases oft turn to the plague it concerns our Masters the Parliament to look about them 〈◊〉 he proceeds at this rate, the Jack may come to swallow the Pike, as the interest often eats out the principal, as his commands are great, so he looks for reverence accordingly; He is very punctual in exacting your hat, and to say right, it is his due, but by the same title, as the upper garment is the veils of the executioner; There was a time when such cattles would have hardly been taken upon suspicion for men in office, unless the old proverb were renewed, and beggars make a free company, and those their wardens; you may see what it is to hang together, look upon them severally, and you cannot but fumble for some threads of charity, but oh they are Termagants in conjunction, like Fiddlers who are Rogues when they go singly, and joined in consort, gentlemen Musicianers. I care not much if I untwist my Committee-man, and so give him the receipt of this grand Catholican, take a State Martyr, one that for his good behaviour, hath paid the Excise of his ears, so suffered Captivity by the Land-piracie of Ship-money, next a primitive freeholder.  
One that hates the King, because he is a Gentleman transgressing the Magna Charta of delving Adam. Add to these a Mortified Bankrupt that helps out his false Weights with some scruples of conscience, and with his peremptory scales can doom his Prince with a Mene tecall. These with a new blew-stockinged Justice lately made of a good basket-hilted Yeoman, with a short-handed Clerk tacked to the Rear of him, to carry the Knapsack of his understanding, together with two or three Equivocal Sirs, whose Religion like their Gentility is the Extract of their Acres, being therefore spiritual, because they are earthly; Not forgetting the man of Law, whose corruption gives the Hogan to the sincerer Juncto; These are the simples of this precious Compound, a kind of Dutch hotchpotch, the Hogan Mogan Committee-man.  
A Commettee-man hath a Side-man, or rather a setter height a Sequestrator, of whom you may say, as of the great Sultan's horse, where he treads the grass grows no more. He is the State's Cormorant, one that fishes for the Public, but feeds himself, the misery is, he fishes without the Cormorant's property, a rope to straighten the gullet, and to make hime disgorge. A Sequestrator! he is the Devil's Nut-hook, the sign with him is always in the clutches. There's more Monsters retain to him, then to all the limbs in Anatomy. 'Tis strange Physicians do not apply him to the soles of the feet in a desperate , he draws fare beyond Pigeons: I hope some Mountebank will slice him, and make the Experiment. He is a tooth-drawer once removed, here's all the difference one applauds the Grinder, and the other the Grist. Never till now could I verify the Poet's description, that the ravenous Harpy had a humane visage: Death itself cannot quit scores with him, like the Demoniac in the Gospel he lives among Tombs Nor is all the holy-water shed by Widows and Orphans a sufficient Exorcism to dispossess him. Thus the Cat sucks your breath, and the Fiend your blood; Nor can the Brotherhood of Witchfinders so sagely instituted with all their terror wean the Familiars.  
But once more to single out my embossed Committee-man his Fate (for I know you would fain see an end of him) is either a whipping Audit, when he is wrung in the withers by a Committee of Examinations; And so the sponge weeps out the moisture which he soaked before, or else he meets his passing peal in the clamorous mutiny of a gut-foundred Garrison; For the Hedge-sparrow will be feeding the Cuckoo, till he mistake his Commons, and by't off her head.  'tis, it is within his desert, for what is observed of some Creatures, that at the same time they trade in productions three stories high▪ suckling the first, big with the second, and cliketting for the third; A Committeman in the Counterpoint, his Mischiefs superfetation a certain scale of destruction, for he ruins the Father, beggars the Son, and strangles the hopes of all posterity.  
FINIS.