A Venice Lookingglass: OR, A LETTER WRITTEN very lately from LONDON to ROME, by a Venetian Clarissimo to Cardinal Barberino, Protector of the English Nation, touching these present distempers.  
Wherein, as in a true Mirror, ENGLAND may behold her own spots, wherein she may see, and foresee, her Follies passed, her present Danger, and future Destruction.  
Faithfully rendered out of the Italian into English.  Fas est, & ab hoste doceri. 
Printed in the year, 1648.   

THE TRANSLATOR TO HIS COUNTRY.  
O England, (specially thou besotted City of London) if thou be'st not past cure, or grown careless and desperate of thyself, be warned by this Stranger, who, having felt thy pulse, and cast thy water very exactly, discovers in thee symptoms of inevitable ruin. Divers of thy own Children have oftentimes admonished thee with tears in their eyes, and terror in their hearts, to recollect thyself, but they have been little regarded: Let a Foreigners advice then take place, and make some impressions in thee, to prevent thy utter destruction.   

TO HIS EMINENCE, THE LORD FRANCISCO BARBERINI, Cardinal of the most holy Apostolic See, and Protector of the English Nation, at his Palaces in Rome.  
MY last to your Eminence was but short, in regard I had been but a short time in this Country, I have now made a longer sojourn here, and taken a leisurely information of all matters; therefore I shall give your Eminence an account proportionably: For by conversation with the most indifferent, and intelligenced men, and by communication with the Ambassadors here resident, I have taken some pains to pump out the truth of things.  
I find, that angry star, which hath loured so long upon Europe in general, hath been as predominant, and cast as direful aspects upon this poor Island, as upon any other part: Truly, my Lord, in all probability this people have passed the Meridian of their happiness, and begin to decline extremely, as well in Repute abroad, as also in the common notions of Religion, and indeed in the ordinary faculty of Reason: I think verily the Ill Spirit never reigned so much in any corner of the earth by those inhuman and horrid things that I have observed among them, Nor is it a petty Spirit, but one of the greatest Cacodaemons that thus drives them on, and makes them so active in the pursuance of their own perdition.  
To deduce matters from their Original, Your Eminency may please to understand, that this King at his access to the Crown had deep debts to pay, both of His Fathers, and his own, he was left engaged in a fresh war with Spain; and had another presently after with France, and both at one time, but he came off well enough of those: Afterwards never any Country flourished in that envied happiness, and wanton kind of prosperity; This City of London was grown to be the greatest Mart, and mistress of Trade, of any in the world, Insomuch, as I have been certainly informed, the King might have eaten merely upon His customs 4000 crowns a day: Moreover, she had a vast bank of money being made the scale of conveying the King of Spain's treasure to Flanders: Insomuch that in a few years she had above ten millions of his moneys brought hither, which she might have remitted in specie or in merchandise, and for which this King had five in the hundred for coinage: Yet could he not get beforehand with the world, having a sister with so many Nephews and nieces, having a Queen with divers children of His own, (at least 16 of the Blood-royal) to maintain, with divers profuse Courtiers besides, which made Him more parsimonious than ordinary. The Wars then growing more active 'twixt Spain and France, as also 'twixt Holland and Spain both by Land and Sea, and divers great Fleets of Men of War as well French (who were grown powerful that way) as Dunkirk, Spaniards, Hollanders, and Hamburgers, appearing daily in His narrow Seas, and sailing close by His Chambers, the world wondered this King had no greater strength at Sea, in case that any of the foresaid Nations should do him an affront, as some of them had already done, by denying to dash their Colours to His Ships: Insomuch that in Holland and other places he was pasquilled at, and portrayed lying in his cradle lullabyed and rocked asleep by the Spaniard: Hereupon being by advertisements from His Agents abroad, and frequent advice of His Privy Council at home, made sensible of the danger, and a kind of dishonour he was fall'n into, and having intelligence that the French Cardinal began to question his title to the Dominion of the Narrow Seas, considering He employed no visible power to preserve it, He began to consult of means to set forth a Royal Fleet: but in regard the Purse of the Crown was lightly ballasted, and that he had no mind to summon the three Estates, because of some indignities he had received in former Parliaments by the Puritan party, (a race of people averse to all Kingly Government, unless they may pair it as they please) his then Attorney General, a great cryed-up-Lawyer, put it in his Head to impose an old Tax called Shipmoney upon the Subject, which the said Lawyer did warrant upon his life to be Legal, for he could produce divers Records how many of his Progenitors had done the like: The King not satisfied with his single opinion, referred it to His Learned Council, and they unanimously averred it to be agreeable to the Law of the Land; yet this would not fully satisfy the King, but He would have the Opinion of His twelve Judges, and they also affirmed by their several vouches the said Tax to be warrantable; Hereupon it was imposed and levied, but some refusing to pay it, there was a suit commenced, during which all the Judges were to redeliver their opinions jointly, and the business being maturely debated and canvased in open Court divers months, and all arguments produced pro & con, nine of the said twelve Judges concluded it Legal: Thereupon the King continued the imposition of the said Tax, and never was money employed so much for the Honour and advantage of a Country, for he sent out every Summer a Royal fleet to scour and secure the Seas; he caused a Galeon to be built, the greatest and gallantest that ever spread sail: Nor did he purse up, and dispose of one penny of this money to any other use, but added much of his own Revenues yearly thereunto: So the world abroad cried up the King of England to be awake again; Trade did wonderfully increase, both Domestic and foreign in all the three Kingdoms; Ireland was reduced to an absolute Settlement, the Arrears of the Crown paid, and a considerable Revenue came thence clearly to the Exchequer of England every year, the salaries of all Officers, with the pay of the standing Army there, and all other Charges being defrayed by Ireland herself, which was never done before. Yet for all this height of happiness, and the glorious fruits of the said Ship-money, (which was but a kind of petty insensible Tax, & a thing of nothing to what hath happened since) there were some foolish people in this Land which murmured at it, and cried out nothing else but a Parliament, a Parliament; and they have had one since with a vengeance.  
But before this occasion, it was observed, that the seeds of disobedience, and a spirit of insurrection was a long time engendering in the hearts of some of this peace-pampred People, which is conceived to proceed from their conversation and commerce with three sorts of men, viz. the Scot, the Hollander and the French Huguenot. Now an advantage happened that much conduced to necessitate the convoking of a Parliament, which was an ill-favoured traverse that fell out in Scotland; For the King intending an Uniformity of Divine worship in all His three Kingdoms, sent thither the liturgy of this Church, but it found cold and course entertainment there, for the whole Nation, men, women and children rise up against them: Hereupon the King absolutely revoked it by Proclamation, wherein He declared 'twas never His purpose to press the practice thereof upon the Consciences of any; therefore commanded that all things should be in statu quo prius, but this would not serve the turn, the Scot took advantage hereby to destroy Hierarchy, and pull down Bishops to get their demeanes: To which purpose they came with an Army in open Field against their own Native King, who not digesting this indignity, Mustered another English Army; which being upon the confines of both Kingdoms, a kind of Pacification was plastered over for the present. The King returning to London, and consulting His second thoughts, resented that insolency of the Scots more than formerly: Hereupon He summons a Parliament, and desires aid to Vindicat that Affront of the Scot The Scot had strong Intelligence with the Puritan Faction in the English Parliament, who seemed to abet his quarrel, rather than to be sensible of any national dishonour received from him; which caused that short-lived Parliament to dissolve in discontent, and the King was forced to find other means to raise and support an Army by private Loans of His Nobler sort of Subjects and Servants: The Scot having punctual Advertisments of every thing that passed, yea, in the King's Cabinet Council was not idle all this while, but rallies what was left of the former Army (which by the articles of Pacification should have been absolutely dismissed) and boldly invades England, which he durst never have done, if he had not well known that this Puritan Party which was now grown very powerful here, and indeed had invited him to this expedition, would stand to him. This foreign Army being, by the pernicious close machinations of some mongrel Englishmen aforementioned, entered into the Bowels of the Country, the King was forced to call this present Parliament, with whom he complied in every thing, so far as to sacrifice unto them both Judge, Bishop, Councillor and Courtier; yea, He yielded to the tumbling down of many tribunals of Justice, which were an advantage to his Prerogative; He assented that the Prelates, who were the most Ancient and Prime Members of the upper House, and had priority of all others, since the first constitution of Parliament in the enrolment of all Acts, He assented I say that these, who were the greatest prop of His Crown should be quite outed from among the Peers; He granted them also a Triennial Parliament, and after that, this Perpetual; which words, to the apprehension of any rational man, carry with them a gross absurdity in the very sense of the thing: And touching this last Grant, I had it from a good hand, that the Queen was a friend to this Parliament, and your Eminence knows how they have requited Her since, but the main open Councillor to this fatal Act was a Scot  
Now the reason which they alleged for this everlasting Parliament was one of the baldest that ever I heard of, it was, that they might have time enough to pay the Scots Army, whereas in one morning they might have dispatched that, by passing so many Subsidies for that use, and upon the credit of those, they might have raised what money they would.  
The Parliament finding the King so pliable, and His pulse to beat so gently, like ill-natured men they fall from inches to els in seeking their advantages: They grew so peremptory as to demand all the military strength of the Kingdom, the Tower of London, with the whole Royal Navy, which they found in an excellent equipage, gramercy shipmoney; so that the benefit of Shipmoney, which they so clamoured at, turned most to their advantage of any thing afterwards.  
The Scot being Fidler-like returned to his Country with meat, drink, and money, the King went a while after to keep a Parliament there, wherein he filled every blank, they did but ask and have, for He granted them what possibly they could propound, both for their Kirk and State, many received Honour, and they divided Bishops Lands amongst them: for all which unparallelled Concessions of Princely grace, they caused an Act already in force to be published, viZ. that it should be damnable Treason in the highest degree that could be, for any of the Scots Nation conjunctly or singly to levy arms, or any military Forces, upon any pretext whatsoever, without His Majesty's royal Commission; and this they caused to be done by way of gratitude, but how they performed it afterwards the world knows too well.  
The King returning to London, in lieu of a welcome to his two Houses of Parliament (to whom also before his departure he had passed more Acts of Grace then all his Progenitors, take them all in a lump) they had patched up a kind of Remonstrance, which was voted in the dead of night, wherein they exposed to the world the least moat in former government, and aggravated to the very height every grievance, all which the King had redressed before; and this Remonstrance, which breathed nothing but a base kind of malice, they presented as a nosegay to their Sovereign Prince, to congratulate his safe return from a foreign Country; which they caused to be printed & published before he could give any answer thereunto. The King finding such a virulent spirit still reign in the House, and knowing who were chief possessed with it (whom he had impeached before, but saw he could get no justice against them) in such an extremity, he did an act like a generous Prince, for taking the Palsgrave with him, he took the first coach he met withal at his Court gate, and went to his House of Commons in person to demand five Members, which he would prove to be Traitors in the highest degree, and to be the Authors of all these distempers, protesting upon the word of a King, that they should have as fair & legal a trial as ever men had; in the interim he only desired that their persons might be secured: The walls of both Houses, and the very stones in London street did seem to ring of this high carriage of the Kings, and the sound went thence to the Country, whence the silly Plebeians came presently in whole herds to this City, and strowting up and down the streets, had nothing in their mouths, but that the privilege of Parliament, the privilege of Parliament was broken, though it be the known clear Law of the Land, that the Parliament cannot supersede or shelter any treason.  
The King finding how violently the pulse of the grisly seduced people did beat, and there having been formerly divers riotous crues of base Mechaniques and Mariners, who had affronted both his own Court, and the two Houses besides, which the Commons, to their eternal reproach, connived at, notwithstanding that divers motions were made by the Lords to suppress them, the King also having private intelligence that there was a mischievous plot to surprise his person, removed his Court to the Country.  
The King departing, or rather being driven away thus from his two Houses, by this mutinous City, he might well at his going away have obraided her in the same words as Henry the 3. did upbraid Paris, who being by such another tumultuous rabble driven out of her in the time of the Ligue, as he was losing sight of her, he turned his face back, and said, Farewell ingrateful City, I will never see thee again till I make my way into thee through thy Walls: Yet, though the King absented himself in person thus from the two Houses, he sent them frequent messages, that they would draw into Acts what he had already assented unto, and if any thing was left yet undone by him, he would do it; therefore he willed them to leave off those groundless fears and jealousies wherewith they had amused both City and Country; and he was ready to return at all times to his Palace in Westminster, provided that his Person might be secured from the former barbarisms & outrages: But in lieu of a dutiful compliance with their Prince, the thoughts of the two Houses ran upon nothing but war: The King then retiring into the North, & thinking with a few of his servants only to go visit a Town of his, he was denied entrance by a fatal unlucky wretch, who afterwards was shamefully executed, with his eldest son, by command of his new Masters of the Parliament: The King being thus shut out of his own town (which opened the first door to a bloody war) put forth a Declaration, wherein he warned all his people that they should look to their proprieties, for if He was thus barred of his own, how could any private Subject be sure to be Master of any thing he had, and herein he was as much Prophet as Prince; For the Parlement-men afterwards made themselves Landlords of the whole Kingdom, it hath been usual for them to thrust any out of his freehold, to take his bed from under him, and his shirt from off his very back. The King being kept thus out of one of his towns, might well suspect that he might be driven out of another, therefore 'twas time for him to look to the preservation of his Person, and the Country came in voluntarily unto him by thousands to that purpose, but he made choice of a few only to be his guard, as the Parlementteers had done a good while before for themselves: But now they went otherwise to work, for they fell a levying, listing, and arming men by whole Regiments and Brigades till they had a very considerable Army a foot, before the King had one Musqueteer or Trooper on his side: yet these men are so notoriously impudent, as to make the King the first Aggressor of the war, and to lay upon Him all the blood that was spilt to this day, wherein the Devil himself cannot be more shameless. The Parliamenteers having an army of foot and horse thus in perfect Equipage, 'twas high time for the King to look to himself, therefore he was forced to display his royal Standard, and draw his sword quite out: Thus a cruel and most cruentous civil war began which lasted near upon four years without intermission, wherein there happened more battles, sieges and skirmishes, then passed in the Netherlands in fourscore years, and herein the Englishmen may be said to get some credit abroad in the world, that they have the same blood running in their veins (though not the same brains in their sculls) which their Ancestors had, who were observed to be the activest people in the field, impatient of delay, and most desirous of battle than any Nation.  
But it was one of the greatest miracles that ever happened in this Land how the King was able to subsist so long against the Parlamenteers, considering the multiplicity of infinite advantatages they had of him by water and land: for they had the Scot, the Sea and the City on their side; touching the first, he rushed in as an Auxiliary, with above 20000. Horse and Foot completely furnished both with small and great ammunition and arms, well clothed and moneyed: For the second, they had all the King's Ships well appointed, which are held to be the greatest security of the Island both for defence and offence, for every one of them is accounted one of the moving Castles of the Kingdom: besides they had all the other standing stone-Castles, Forts, and tenable places to boot: Concerning the last, (viz. the City) therein they had all the wealth, bravery, and prime ammunition of England, this being the only Magazine of men and money: Now if the King had had but one of these on his side, he had in all probability crushed them to nothing: yet did he bear up strangely against them a long time, and might have done longer, had he kept the campane, and not spent the spirits of his men before Towns; had he not made a disadvantageous election of some Commanders in chief, and lastly, had he not had close Traitors within doors, as well as open Rebels without; for his very Cabinet Council, and Bedchamber were not free of such vermin, and herein the Parlementeers spent unknown sums and were very prodigal of the Kingdom's money.  
The King, after many traverses of war, being reduced to a great straight by cross successes and Counsels, rather than to fall into the hands of the Parlementeers, withdrew himself in a Servingman's disguise to the Scors' army, as his last rendezvous, and this plot was managed by the French Agent then residing here; A man would think that that Nation woled have deemed it an eternal honour unto them to have their own King and Countryman throw himself thus into their arms, and to repose such a singular trust in them upon such an Extremity: but they corresponded not so well with him as he expected, for though at first when the Parlamenteers solicited their dear Brethren for a delivery of the King's person unto them, their note was then, if any foreign petty Prince had so put himself upon them, they could not with honour deliver him, much less their own Native King; yet they made a sacrifice of him at last for 800000. Crowns; whereupon Bellieure the French Ambassador being convoyed by a Troop of horse from the King towards London, to such a stand, in lieu of largesse to the soldiers, he drew out an half crown piece, and asked them how many pence that was, they answered 30. He replied, for so much did Judas betray his Master, and so he departed  
And now, that in the course of this Historical Narration I have touched upon France, your Eminence may please to understand, that nothing almost could tend more to the advantage of that King, than these commotions in England, considering that he was embarked in an actual war with the House of Austria and that this Island did do Spain some good offices; among other, by transport of his treasure to Dunkirk in English bottoms, whereunto this King gave way, and sometimes in his own galleons, which saved the Spainard near upon 20. in the hundred, then if he had sent it by way of Genoa; so that some think, though France made semblance to resent the sad condition of her Neighbour, and thereupon sent the Prince of Harcour, and the foresaid Monsieur Bellieure to compose matters, yet she never really intended it, as being against her present interest and engagements: yet the world thinks it much that she should publicly receive an Agent from these Parlamenteers, and that the French Nobility who were used to be the gallantest men in the world to vindicate the quarrels of distressed Ladies, are not more sensible of the outrages that have been offered a daughter of France, specially of Henry the great's.  
But to resume the thread of my Narration, the King (and with him, one may say, England also) being thus bought and sold, the Parlamenteers instead of bringing him to Westminster, which had put a Period to all distempers tossed him up and down to private houses, and kept the former Army still a foot: And truly I think there was never Prince so abused, or poor people so baffled, and no people but a purblind besotted people would have suffered themselves to be so baffled: for notwithstanding that no Enemy appeared in any corner of the Kingdom, yet above 20000. Tagaroons have been kept together ever since to grind the faces of the poor, and exhaust the very vital spirits of town and Country, and keep them all in a perfect slavery: Had the Parlement-men, when the Scots were gone, brought their King in a generous and frank way (as had well becomed Englishmen) to sit among them, and trusted to him (which of necessity they must do at last) as they had gained more honour far in the world abroad, so they had gained more upon his affections then I believe they will ever do hereafter.  
But to proceed, the King having been a good while prisoner to the Parliament, the Army snatched him away from them, and some of the chiefest Commanders having pawned their souls unto him to restore him speedily, in lieu thereof they tumbled him up and down to sundry places, till they juggled him at last to that small Isle where now he is surrounded with a guard of strange faces and if haply he begins to take delight in any of those faces, he is quickly taken out of his sight. These harsh usages hath made him become all grey and oregrown with hair, so that he looks rather like some Sylvan satire than a Sovereign Prince: And truly my Lord the meanest slave in St. Marks galleys or the abiect's Captif in Algiers bannier is not so miserable as he in divers kinds, for they have the comfort of their wives, children and friends, they can convey and receive Letters, send Messenggers upon their errands, and have private discourse with any; all which is denied to the King of great Britain, nay the young Princes his children are not permitted as much as to ask him blessing in a letter. In so much that if he were not a great King of his passions, and had a heart cast in an extraordinary Mould, these pressures & those base aspersions that have been publicly cast upon him by the Parliament itself, had been enough to have sent him out of the world  this, and indeed 'tis the main thing they drive at, to torture his brain, and tear his very heartstrings if they could: so that whereas this foolish ignorant people speak such horrid things of our Inquisition, truly my Lord 'tis a most gentle way of proceeding being compared to this King's persecutions.  
As the King himself is thus in quality of a captif, so are all his Subjects become perfect slaves, they have fooled themselves into a worse slavery than Jew or Greek under the Ottomans, for they know the bottom of their servitude by paying so many Sultanesses for every head; but here, people are put to endless, unknown, tyrannical Taxes, besides plundering and AcciZe, which two words, and the practice of them (with storming of Towns) they have learned of their pure brethren of Holland: and for plunderings, these Parlementeer Saints think they may rob any that adheres not to them as lawfully as the jews did the Egyptians: 'Tis an unsommable mass of money these Reformers have squandered in few years, whereof they have often promised and solemnly voted a public account to satisfy the Kingdom: but as in a hundred things more, so in this precious particular they have dispensed with their Votes: they have consumed more treasure with pretence to purge one Kingdom, then might have served to have purchased two; more (as I am credibly told) then all the Kings of England spent of the public stock since the Saxon Conquest: Thus have they not only beggared the whole Island, but they have hurled it into the most fearfullest Chaos of confusion that ever poor Country was in; they have torn in pieces the reins of all Government, trampled upon all Laws of heaven and earth, and violated the very Dictamen of nature, by making mothers to betray their sons, and the sons their fathers, but specially that great Charter, which is the Pandect of all the Laws and Liberties of the freeborn Subject, which at their admission to the House they are solemnly sworn to maintain, is torn in flitters: besides those several Oaths they forged themselves, as the Protestation and Covenant, where they voluntarily swear to maintain the King's Honour and Rights, together with the established Laws of the Land, etc. Now I am told, that all Acts of Parliament here are Laws, and they carry that Majesty with them, that no power can suspend or repeal them, but the same power that made them, which is the King sitting in full Parliament; these mongrel Politicians have been so notoriously impudent as to make an inferior Ordinance of theirs to do it, which is point-blank against the very fundamentals of this Government, and their own Oaths, which makes me think that there was never such a perjured pack of wretches upon earth, never such Monsters of mankind.  
Yet this simple infatuated people have a Saintlike opinion of these Monsters, this foolish City guards them daily with Horse and Foot, whereby she may be said to kiss the very stones that are thrown at her, and the hand whence they came, which a dog would not do: But she falls to recollect her  now that she gins to be pinched in Trade, that that her Mint is starved, and that the Prince commands both Sea and River: yet the leading'st men in her Common-council care not much for it, in regard most of them have left traffiqueing abroad, finding it a more easy and gainful way of trading at home, by purchasing Church-lands, plundered goods, and debts upon the Public Faith; thus the Saints of this Island turn godliness into gain.  
Truly my Lord, I give the English for a lost Nation, never was there a more palpable oblaesion of the brain, and a more visible decay of reason in any race of men: it is a strange judgement from heaven, that a people should not be more sensible how they are become slaves to Rebels, and those most of them the scumm of the Nation, which is the basest of miseries: how they suffer them to tyrannize by a mere arbitrary extrajudicial power o'er their very souls and bodies, o'er their very lives and livelihoods; how their former freedom is turned to fetters, Molehills into Mountains of grievances, Ship-money into Accize, Justice into Tyranny: For nothing hath been and is daily so common amongst them as imprisonment without charge, and a charge without an accuser, condemnation without appearance, and forfeitures without conviction.  
To speak a little more of the King, if all the infernal fiends had ligued against him, they could not have designed & disgorged more malice: they would have laid to his charge his father's death, as errand a lie as ever was hatched in hell: they would make him foreknow the insurrection in Ireland, whereas the Spanish Ambassador here, & his Confessor who is a very reverend Irish man, told me, that he knew no more of it then the grand Mogor did: they charge him with all the blood of this civil war, whereas they and their instruments were the first kindlers of it, and that first prohibited trade: they intercepted and printed his private letters to his Queen, and hers to him, (Oh barbarous baseness!) but therein they did him a pleasure, though the intent was malicious, their aim in all things being to embitter and envenom the hearts of his people towards him; and this was to render him a glorious and well-beloved Prince, and for making him rich, all which they had vowed to do upon passing the Act of Continuance, they have made him poorer than the meanest of all his vassals, they have made him to have no propriety in house, goods, or Lands, or as one may say, in his wife and children: 'Twas usual for the father to hunt in his Park while the son hunted for his life in the field, for the wife to lie in his beds, while the husband laid wait to murder him abroad; they have seized upon and sold his private Hang and Plate, yea his very Cabinets, Jewels and Pictures.  
Nor are they the honourablest sort of people, and men nobly extracted (as in Scotland) that do all this, (for then it were not so much to be wondered at) but they are the meanest sort of Subjects, many of them Mechaniques, whereof the lower House is full; specially the subordinate Committees, who domineer more o'er Nobles and Gentry, than the Parliament-Members themselves their Masters.  
Touching those few Peers that sit now voting in the upper House, they may be said to be but mee● Ciphers, they are grown so degenerate as to suffer the Commons to give them the Law, to ride upon their backs, and do most things without them: There be many thousand Petitions that have been recommended by these Lords to the lower House, which are scornfully thrown into corners and never read; their Messengers have used to dance attendance divers hours and days afore they were vouchsafed to be let in or heard, to the eternal dishonour of those Peers, and yet poor spirited things they resent it not: The Commons now command all, and though, as I am informed, they are summoned thither by the King's Original Writ but to consent to what the King and his great Counsel of Peers (which is the true Court of Parliament) shall resolve upon; They are now from Consenters become the chiefest Counsellors yea Controwlers of all; nay some of this lower House fly so high as to term themselves Conquerors, and though in all conferences with the Lords ●hey stand bare before them, yet by a new way of mixed Committees they carry themselves as Colleagues: These are the men that now have the vogue, and they have made their Privileges so big swollen, that they seem to have quite swallowed up both the King's Prerogatives, and that of the Lords: These are the Grandees, and Sages of the times, though most of them have but cracked brains and crazy fortunes; Nay some of them are such errand Knaves and coxcombs, that 'tis questionable whither they more want common honesty, or common sense; nor know no more what belongs to true policy than the left leg of a joint-stoole: They are grown so high a tiptoes, that they seem to scorn an Act of Amnestia●, or any grace from their King, whereas some of them deserve to be hanged as oft as they have hairs upon their heads; nor have they any more care of the common good of England than they have of Lapland, so they may secure their persons, and continue their Power and Authority, is sweet, though it be in Hell. Thus, my Lord, is England now governed, so that 'tis an easy thing to take a prospect of her ruin; The Scot is now the rising man, who is the third time struck into her bowels with a numerous Army: They say he hath vowed never to return till he hath put the Crown on the King's head, the Sceptre in his hand, and the sword by his side; if he do so, it will be the best thing that ever he did, though some think that he will never be able to do England as much good as he hath done her hurt; He hath extremely outwitted the English of late years: And they who were the causers of his first and last coming in, I hold to be the most pernicious Enemies that ever this Nation had; for 'tis probable that Germany will be sooner free of the Swed, than England of the Scot, who will stick close unto him like a burr, that he cannot shake him off; He is become already Master of the Englishmans soul, by imposing a religion upon him, and he may hereafter be master of his body.  
Your Eminence knows there is a periodical fate hangs over all Kingdoms after such a revolution of time, and rotation of fortune's wheel; the course of the world hath been, for one Nation, like so many nails, to thrust out another; But for this Nation, I observe by conference with divers of the saddest and best weighdst men among them, that the same presages foretell their ruin as did the Israelites of old, which was a murmuring against their Governors; It is a long time that both Judges Bishops, and privy Counsellors have been muttered at, whereof the first should be the oracles of the Law, the other of the Gospel, the last of State-affairs, and that our judgements should acquiesce upon theirs; Here as I am informed; 'twas common for every ignorant client to arraign his Judge; for every puny Clerk to censure the Bishop; for every shallow-brain homebred fellow to descant upon the results of the Council Table: and this spirit of contradiction and contumacy hath been a long time fomenting in the minds of this people, infused into them principally, by the Puritanical Faction. Touching the second of these (I mean Bishops) they are grown so odious (principally for their large demeanes) among this people, as Monks were of old, and one may say it is a just judgement fallen upon them, for they were most busy in demolishing Convents and Monasteries, as these are in destroying cathedrals and Ministers; But above all, it hath been observed that this people hath been a long time rotten-hearted towards the splendour of the Court, the very glory of their King, and the old established Government of the land: 'Tis true there were a few small leaks sprung in the great vessel of the State, (and what vessel was ever so tight but was subject to leaks?) but these wiseacres in stopping of one have made a hundred: Yet if this King's reign were paralleled to that of Queen EliZabeth's, who was the greatest Minion of a people that ever was, one will find that she stretched the Prerogative as much: In her time as I have read in the Latin Legend of her life, some had their hands cut off for writing against her matching with the Duke of Anjou, others were hanged at Tyburn for traducing her government; she pardoned thrice as many Roman Priests as this King did she passed divers Monopolies, she kept an Agent at Rome, she sent her Sergeant at Arms to pluck out a Member then sitting in the House of Commons by the ears, and clapped him in prison; she called them saucy fellows to meddle with her Prerogative, or with the government of her household, she managed all foreign affairs, specially the wars with Ireland solely by her privy Counsel; yet there was no murmuring at her reign, and the reason I conceive to be, that there was neither Scot or Puritan had then any stroke in England.  
Yet, for all their disobedience and grumble against their Liege Lord the King, this people are exactly obedient to their new Masters of the House of Commons, though they sit there but as their Servants and entitle themselves so; and also though in lieu of the small scratches which England might happily have received before (all which the King had cured) these new Masters have made such deep gashes in her, and given her such deadly wounds, that I believe are incurable.  
My Lord, I find by my researches, that there are two great Idols in this Kingdom the greatest that ever were, they are the Parliament and the Pulpit; 'tis held a kind of blasphemy, if not a sin against the Holy Ghost to speak against the one, and the whole body of Religion is nailed unto the other, for there is no devotion here at all but preaching, which God wots is little better than prating. The abuse of these two hath been the source of all the distempers which now reign: touching the latter, it hath served as a subservient Engine to prop up the power and popularity of the first; these malicious Pulpit-men breathe out nothing thence but either sedition, schism or blasphemy: poor shallow brained Sciolists, they would question many things in the old Testament, and find Apocrypha in the New: And such is the violence wherewith the minds of men and women are transported towards these Preachmen, and no other part of devotion besides, that in all probability they will in time take a surfeit of them: so that give this giddy people line enough there will be no need of Catholic Arms to reduce them to the Apostolic Church, they will in time pave the way to it themselves, and be glad to return to Rome to find out a Religion again.  
There was here before, as I am informed, a kind of a face of a Church, there were some solemnities, venerations and decencies used that a man might discover some piety in this people; there was a public Liturgy that in pithy Pathetical prayers reached all occasions; the Sacraments were administered with some reverence, their Churches were kept neat and comely; but this ●●sty race of miscreants have nothing at all of sweetness, of piety and devotion in them; 'tis all turned to a fatuous kind of more zeal after learning, as if Christianity had no sobriety, consistence, or end of knowledge at all: These silly things, to imitate the Apostles time, would have the same form of discipline to govern whole Nations, as it did a chamberfull of men in the infancy of the Church▪ they would make the same coat serve our Saviour at 30. years, which fitted him at three: 'tis incredible how many ugly sorts of heresies they daily hatch, but they are most of them old ones newly furbished; they all relate to Aerius, a perfect hater of Bishops, because he could not be one himself. The two Sectaries which sway most, are the Presbyterians and Independents, the Presbyterian is a spawn of a Puritan, and the Independent a spawn of the Presbyterian: there's but one hop 'twixt the first and a jew, and but half a hop 'twixt the other and an Infidel; they are both opposite to Monarchy and Hierarchy; and the latter would have no Government at all, but a parity and promiscuous confusion, a race of creatures fit only to inhabit Hell: and one of the fruits of this blessed Parliament, and of these two Sectaries is that they have made more Jew's and Atheists than I think there is in all Europe besides; but truly my Lord I think the judgements of Heaven were never so visible in any part of the Earth, as they are now here, for there is Rebel against Rebel, House against House, City against Army, Parliament against Scot, but these two Sectaries, I mean the Presbyterian and Independent, who were the firebrands that put this poor Island first in a flame, are now in most deadly feud one against the other (though they both concur in this to destroy government:) And if the King had time enough to look only upon them, they would quickly hang, draw, and destroy one another.  
But indeed all Christian Princes should observe the motions & successes of these two unlucky Incendiaries, for if they should ligue together again (as they have often played fast and lose one with another) and prevail here, this Island would not terminate their designs, they would puzzle all the world besides. Their Preachmen ordinarily cry out in the Pulpit, there is a great work to be done upon earth, for the reforming all mankind, and they are appointed by Heaven to be the chief Instruments of bringing it about: They have already been so busy abroad, that (with vast sums of money) they brought the Swed upon the Dane, and the very Savages upon the English Cavalier in Virginia; and could they confederate with Turk, or Tartar, or Hell itself against them, they would do it: they are monstrously puffed up with pride, that they stick not to call themselves Conquerors; and one of the chief ringleaders of them, an ignorant homebred kind of Brewer, was not ashamed to vaunt it publicly in the Commons House, that if he had but 20000. men, he would undertake to march to Constantinople, and pull the Ottoman Emperor out of his throne.  
Touching the other grand Idol the Parliament, 'tis true that the primitive constitution of Parliament in this Island was a wholesome piece of policy, because it kept a good correspondence, and closed all ruptures 'twixt the King and his people, but this thing they call Parliament now, may rather be termed but a cantle of one, or indeed a Conventicle of Schismatics, rather than a great Counsel; 'tis like a kind of headless Monster, or some ectropiated carcase; for there is neither King nor Prelate, nor scarce the seventh part of Peers and Commons, no not the twelfth part fairly elected; nevertheless they draw the people, specially this City, like so many stupid animals, to adore them.  
Yet though this institution of Parliament be a wholesome thing in itself, there is in my judgement a great incongruity in one particular; and I believe it hath been the cause of most distempers; It is, That the Burgesses are more in number then the Knights of Shires; for the Knights of the Shires are commonly Gentlemen well born, and bred, and versed in the Laws of the Land, as well as foreign governments, divers of them; but the Burgesses of Towns are commonly Tradesmen, and being bred in Corporations, they are most of them inclining to Puritamism, and consequently to popular government; these, exceeding the Knights in number, carry all before them by plurality of Voices, and so puzzle all: And now that I have mentioned Corporations, I must tell your Lordship, that the greatest soloecism in the policy of this Kingdom, is the number of them; especially this monstrous City, which is composed of nothing else but of Corporations; and the greatest errors that this King, specially his Father committed, was to suffer this town to spread her wings so wide; for she bears no proportion with the bigness of the Island, but may fit a Kingdom thrice as spacious; she engrosseth and dreines all the wealth and strength of the Kingdom; so that I cannot compa●e England more properly then to one of our Cremona geese, where the custom is, to fatten only the heart, but in doing so the whole body grows lank.  
To draw to a conclusion, This Nation is in a most sad and desperate condition, that they deserved to be pitied, and preserved from sinking, and having cast the present state of things and all interests into an equal balance, I find, my Lord there be three ways to do it, one good, and two bad:  
1. The first of the bad ones is the Sword, which is one of the scourges of heaven, especially the Civil sword.  
2. The second bad one is the Treaty, which they now offer the King in that small Island where he hath been kept Captif so long, (in which quality the world will account him still while he is detained there) and by that Treaty to bind him as fast as they can, and not trust him at all.  
3. The good way is, in a free confiding brave way (Englishmen-like to send for their King to London, where City, and Country should petition him to summon a new and free full Parliament, which he may do as justly as ever he did thing in his life, these men having infringed as well all the essential Privileges of Parliament, as every puntillio of it, for they have often risen up in a confusion without adjournment, they had two Speakers at once, they have most perjuriously and beyond all imagination betrayed the trust both King and Country reposed in them, subverted the very fundamentals of all Law, and plunged the whole Kingdom in this bottomless gulf of calamities: another Parliament may haply do some good to this languishing Island, and cure her convulsions, but for these men that arrogat to themselves the name of Parliament (by a local puntillio only because they never stirred from the place where they have been kept together by mere force) I find them by their actions to be so pervers, so irrational and refractory, so far given over to a reprobat sense, so fraught with rancour, with an irreconcilable malice and thirst of blood, that England may well despair to be healed by such Phlebotomists, or Quacksalvers; besides they are so full of scruples, apprehensions, and jealousies proceeding from black guilty souls, and gawl'd consciences, that they will do nothing but chop Logic with their King, and spin out time to continue their power, and evade punishment, which they think is unavoidable if there should be a free Parliament.  
Touching the King he comports himself with an admired tempered equanimity, he invades and o'remasters them more and more in all his answers by strength of reason, though he have no soul breathing to consult withal, but his own Genius: he gains wonderfully upon the hearts and opinion of his people, and as the Sun useth to appear bigger in winter, and at his declension in regard of the interposition of certain meteors 'twixt the eye of the beholder and the object, so this King being thus o'erclouded and declined shines far more glorious in the eyes of his people; and certainly these high moral virtues of constancy, courage and wisdom come from above; and no wonder, for Kings as they are elevated above all other people and stand upon higher ground, they sooner receive the inspirations of heaven; nor doth he only by strength of reason outwit them, but he woos them by gentleness and mansuetude; as the Gentleman of Paris who having an Ape in his house that had taken his only child out of the cradle, and dragged him up to the ridge of the house, the parent with ruthful heart charmed the Ape by fair words and other blandishments to bring him softly down, which he did; England may be said to be now just upon such a precipice, ready to have her brains dashed out, and I hope these men will not be worse natured then that brute animal, but will save her.  
Thus have I given your Eminence a rough account of the state of this poor and pitifully deluded people, which I will perfect when I shall come to your presence, which I hope will be before this Autumnal Equinox; I thought to have sojourned here longer, but that I am grown weary of the clime, for I fear there s the other two scourge of heaven that menace this Island, I mean the famine and pestilence, especially this City, for their profaneness, rebellion and sacrilege: it hath been a talk a great while whether Antichrist be come to the world or no, I am sure Anti-Jesus, which is worse, is among this people, for they hold all veneration though voluntary proceeding from the inward motions of a sweet devoted soul, and causing an outward genuflexion, to be superstitious, insomuch that one of the Synodical Saints here printed and published a Book entitling it against jesus Worship.  
London this 16. of August, Stylo loci, 1648. So in the profundest posture of reverence I kiss your vest, being My Lord, Your Eminences most humbly devoted, J. B. ●.