AN ELEGY AND EPITAPH On that glorious Saint, and blessed Martyr, King Charles I.  
The best of Kings since Christ, but murdered by the worst of men since the Creation.  
Written a day or two after his Martyrdom, and occasioned by an Arbitrary and Tyrannous Proclamation that made it Treason for any man to speak or write against the barbarous Murder.  
Now published to show the World the unparallelled Patience and Piety of the dead Murdered King; and the matchless impudence and impiety of his past and present living Murderers.  
For the suspicion of which, and many other things, the Author lay almost two years in the Gatehouse, defying all the insolent and illagal Usurpation, and power at Westminster and White-Hall.  
Saying always then, and ever since, and ever will, God bless King CHARLES the Second.  
London, Printed for J. William's at the Crown in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1661.   

An Elegy on that glorious Saint, and blessed Martyr, KING CHARLES the First, the best of Kings since Christ, but murdered by the worst of men since the Creation.  

NOt speak! not writ! I'll sooner pray to Hell,  
Preach against Heaven; & the Almighty tell,  
That Cromwell, Ireton, Peter, those damned three  
He-Furies: Earth's inhuman Trinity,  
Hell's Cerberus shall be my Saviour, set  
My faith on this new Triple Mahomet:  
Change Greek and Hebrew for th' Arabic work;  
And from a Christian Cavalier, turn Turk.   

Not speak! not writ! Comets shall sooner be  
Took to stop bloody-fluxt impiety:  
And a full draught from Hell of liquid heat,  
A cooling julip to the flaming meat.   

Not speak! not writ! the many headed Snake,  
Hydra, as many Christian Kings shall make:  
And all the Christian Monarches make at best  
(Single or joined) a manyheaded Beast.   

Can any pen or tongue be dumb, when guilt  
Cries out so loud, such innocent blood is spilt?  
No, it were silent blasphemy, and nigh  
To a concealed Christian Apostasy;  
And we might justly fear against us all  
The fatal hand-writing upon the Wall.   

Not speak! nor write! hell's lower house as soon  
May vote salvation to us, and the boon  
Be signed above, and I as easily fear,  
Destruction, as a Proclamation here.   

Hence halters to those hellhounds that proclaim  
Bad, good; truth, treason, in the Devil's name;  
Shall Bradshaw, Steel, and Cook, control and rant,  
Like Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamant?  
Shall a whole Legion of packed fiends contrive  
To murder Godlike Charles, and I connive?  
No, Were I dumb like Atys, (Croesus' son)  
I must cry out, when such a deed is done:  
And speak, and write in strains as big, and high  
(If possible) as all their villainy:  
Outvoice the Thunder when 'tis loudly sent  
The wicked for a fright and punishment:  
Silence hell's howls, and (faithless) search to find  
Murderers there of such a bloody kind.   

Catiline, Sylla, Marius, those old three;  
Three Children in the fiery furnace be,  
Compared to these: the Roman senate's hate  
To Cesar, but an honourable fate.  
Ravilliac's hand imbrued in milk, the ill  
By Faux intended a mere peccadill.  
The age and acts of that mad Parliament,  
Henry the third's; a holy time of Lent,  
And pious works the Devil himself may pass  
For a past, present, and a future Ass.   

Wise Solomon was out, if he did sum  
Prophetically up what was to come,  
In his old saw; for I dare boldly say,  
There's something new under the Sun to day:  
And the more new, because it did not soon  
Fright to a midnight darkness, midday noon:  
Threaten the World with Doomsday, & each globe,  
Hang round for it with a sad funeral robe:  
But caused Heavens searcher pry with brighter light,  
As having never seen so black a sight.   

A sight, at which all ages past, to come,  
Out of Religion, must for shame be dumb:  
Only this present, bold, Atheistick, tell,  
What makes one ignorant, one Infidel:  
Yet they who dare but speak it now, may fear  
Convulsions, we contusions but to hear.  
I tremble when God's vengeance shall begin,  
What shoals of souls must expiate this sin?  
The British name and Nation must not die  
Alone, but all the Princes far and nigh,  
That suffered it: King Charles his bloody head,  
The hairy Comet that portends them dead.  
France, Spain, Pole, Denmark, all ye royal Clowns,  
Self-Traytors, Sons of Coridon's, not Crowns,  
Look to it well, destruction's at your door;  
This bloody Star was never seen before.   

The World must be beheaded, common Fate  
Headsman to introduce a common State:  
And (Nero-like) all Monarches here below,  
By the base people suffer at one blow.   

And may it come to pass, and worse, may earth  
And Heaven mix strongly in a monstrous birth  
Of strange unheard confusion: the fixed stars  
Dropped to the centre, set the Poles at jars.  
The Signs Celestial trace the Earth, the Seas  
Turn Skies, and Angel's man's Antipodes.   

Since Charles is gone; that modern Princely frame  
Of Ancient Virtue, and what e'er bears name  
Of pious, peaceable, religious, wise,  
Just, learned, patient's taken from our eyes:  
Heaven's Darling dead; alive earth's chief delight,  
To man let nothing seem in either right:  
Only his spirit, (which now can purely see)  
Behold in order all things as they be:  
More bright by his eclipse, and set, adorned  
With a Celestial Crown, for one was thorned.   

Now th' art a great and glorious King indeed,  
Above the Paternoster or the Creed  
Of thy packed perjured Parliament, who swore,  
And juggled in themselves; thee out of door.   

Here is no need a Parliament to call;  
No uproars, tumults about this Whitehall:  
The common-people, (Saints and Angels here)  
Cry not for justice, but are void of fear,  
And jealousies; no Bomkins pens are pointed  
With sharp petitions against God's Anointed.  
Here are no Members five, that plot, and plea  
Against the known Laws, nor will ever be;  
No City-guard, for subtle, guilty fear,  
The Citizens are wise, and honest here.  
Here's no Rebellion under a pretence  
Of evil Council, and a just defence:  
No Presbyters, or Independents be,  
To preach it up, here's only Hierarchy,  
And Monarchy, where God, as King controls,  
And Christ as the Archbishop of the souls.   

Here is no driving hence, or forced flight,  
No battle at Edge-hill, or Naseby fight:  
No running to the Scots, and then be sold  
By his false, covetous Natives, back for gold  
To the bloodthirsty English: an old crew  
Of Christian Savages, beyond the new  
Heathenish Americans, and deeper died  
In royal gore than all the world beside:  
Only the Scot excepted, to whose shame  
King-killer is a convertible name;  
False, stubborn, form, and matter: Judas can  
Say, he was not so much Christ's Countryman;  
Nor bound to such obedience by the tie  
Of subject, or the Law of Sovereignty:  
Besides that Christ could not so well be styled,  
The Father of his Country, he his child:  
Nay, boldly more in his defence he got  
Not the tyth-penny of the greedy Scot  
But Judas there is out, and adds a lie  
Unto his avarice, and treachery;  
For he was only one, and in earth's round  
There could not be another Judas found?  
To join and share the sum with him; but here  
Did twenty thousand Judasses' appear,  
At once to sell and share their Master: he  
Outstrips them yet in his last obsequy,  
And hangs himself for sorrow; these are bend  
To hang themselves before they will repent;  
Such is their bloody hardness, cursed Cain  
Stand still, and let these Vagabonds obtain  
Thy straggling punishment, 'tis theirs the rather,  
Being less to kill a Brother than a Father.   

Here is no Holmby to restrain, or fright  
Thy power, or peace; no Sea-bound Isle of Wight  
To limit thee, no Carisbrook, no Hurst,  
No Whaley, Hammond, Ewer, and which is worst;  
No high, forged Court of falsehood, that dares try,  
Affront, adjudge their Sovereign Lord to die:  
Against all honour, wisdom, law, or right,  
The Magna Charta of the meanest wight:  
Unheard, or unaccused by any tongue,  
But what from their own setting malice sprung:  
And after all these deeds of darkness done,  
To execute him in the open Sun:  
An action without boldness I may dare  
Place next the Jews, to Christ; though not compare,  
And yet the Jews were better in one thing,  
These called Charles Tyrant; and they Christ a King.  
And I may say, his suffering set aside,  
None e'er less Kinglike, or more Christ-like died.   

To see a Monarch of three Kingdoms stand  
At his own Gate, and in his chiefest land:  
Mounted in spite upon a common throne  
Of shame, and treason, by himself alone:  
Forsaken of his Nobles, Subjects, all,  
But Rebels, by whose power he is to fall  
A Martyr for Religion; and to die  
Redeemer of the people's liberty  
From popular inslavement, his bare head  
bowed to the Headman's hand to strike him dead.  
Yet all this while neither in word, or deed,  
Oppose the traitorous axe, but mildly bleed,  
Instructing first with a Majestic grace,  
His graceless guard that gazed him in the face,  
Undutifully covered, praying too,  
And pardoning those, that God can hardly do;  
His absent, present murderers, who boast  
A sin next that against the Holy Ghost:  
Malicious 'gainst the light of truth, who can  
Believe it? and all this as merely man.  
The earth that at Christ's passion shook before,  
Stood now stone-still, as being amazed the more.  
The graves that opened at that horrid sight,  
Were hushed at this, as in a greater fright.  
The veil rend then, with us was long before,  
Temple, Priests, Tables, all in pieces tore.  
Hell that but howled, now wept, and laughed, the devil  
Came sad, and glad at once, to see this evil,  
And good together mixed; whereby his Crown  
Was so at once exalted, and cast down.  
Each circumstance and accident to paint,  
Would make a Saint an Atheist, Atheist Saint:  
And I to draw this white and black beside,  
Must have an Angel's wing, a Devil's hide.   

And therefore being set (bright Charles) and we  
Left here, not thine, but our own Elegy;  
Dark, clouded Cavaliers, who hourly look  
To find our names writ in thy sanguine book:  
By thy example let us learn to die,  
(As formerly to live) in piety,  
Practise thy gifts, that we as well may be  
The subjects of thy graces; as of thee:  
Mildred, merciful in death, and Martyrs fall  
All we for thee; as thou hast done for all:  
That Charles, and Cavalier, within this Land,  
For Saint, and Martyr, may hereafter stand.   

And may thy Son, the glory of his Age,  
And hopeful stop, and scourge of Rebel's rage:  
King Charles the second, first to all beside,  
But thee, whom English Jews have crucified:  
Great in good subjects and a virtuous name,  
Be only Charles the less in martyred fame.    

An Epitaph  
On that unparallelled Prince King CHARLES the First, the Sacred and Royal, Church and State-Martyr of England; to his own glory, and the eternal shame of his three Kingdoms, and all Christian Princes beside, patiently yet publicly beheaded at his chief Courtgate, White-Hall January the 30. 1648.  

STand off Rebellion, let no traitorous eye  
Presume to glance on Martyred Majesty.  
Duty, and love approach: yet draw not near,  
Without a drooping heart, a dropping tear:  
No Age did ever any place intrust  
With such sad, sacred, royal, dangerous dust:  
So threatening, and portentous, it may make  
The present tremble, future Ages quake.   

Here severed lies, joined Britain's Charles the First,  
Best King since Christ, but butchered by the worst  
Of men since the Creation: a packed crew  
Of Devils, that make the crucifying Jew  
A Circumcising Angel, and advance  
Known malice above bloody ignorance:  
Such fiends 'twere sin in Christians to be waved,  
To think they were created, can be saved:  
Whose Sunburnt actions, and black midnight works,  
White hells, Saint Atheists, deify the Turks:  
Not God's scent executioners, and rod,  
But executioners themselves of God,  
As high as they could reach; for here lies dead  
God, in his earthly Image murdered.   

A looking glass, for Christian Kings to see  
Their downfall in beheaded Monarchy;  
And Christianity in its full ray  
Of Majesty, benighted at noonday:  
As if the great and good of all the world,  
In Charles his set were to a Chaos hurled.   

But God, to vindicate the clouded flame  
Of his slain Second, hath so starred his name;  
Black Treason needs this blazing truth must tell  
Had he till Doomsday stood, he'd sooner fallen.   
FINIS.