A LETTER TO THE EARL OF PEMBROKE Concerning the Times, and the sad condition both of Prince and People.  The Land mourneth because of Oaths. 
Printed in the Year, 1647.   

To the Right Honourable Philip Earl of Pembrock, and Montgomery, Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter, and one of His Majisties' most Honourable Privy Counsel, &c,  
My Lord,  
THis Letter requires no Apology, much less any pardon, but may expect rather a good receprion, and thanks, when your Lordship hath seriously perused the contents, and ruminated well upon the matter it treats of, with your second and third thoughts, which usually carry with them a greater advantage of wisdom: It concerns not your body, or temporal estate, but things reflecting upon the noblest part of you, your soul, which being a beam of Immortality, and a type of the Almighty, is incomparably more precious, and rendereth all other earthly things to be but babbles and transitory trifles. Now, the strongest tye, the solemnest engagement and stipulation that can be betwixt the soul and her Creator, is an Oath. I do not understand common tumultuary rash oaths, proceeding from an ill habit, or beat of passion upon sudden contingencies, for such oaths bind one to nought else but to repentance: No, I mean serious and legal oaths, taken with a calm prepared spirit, either for the asserting of truth, and conviction of falsehood, or for fidelity in the execution of some Office, or binding to civil obedience and Loyalty, which is one of the essential parts of a Christian. Such public oaths legally made with the Royal assent of the Sovereign from whom they receive both legality and life, else they are invalid & unwarrantable, as they are religious acts in their own nature, so is the taking and observance of them part of God's honour, & there can be nothing more derogatory to the high Majesty and holiness of his name, nothing more dangerous, destructive & damnable to humane souls than the infringement and eluding of them, or omission in the performance of them. Which makes the Turks, of whom Christians in this particular may learn a tender piece of humanity, to be so cautious, that they seldom or never administer an oath to Greek, Jew, or any other Nation, and the reason is, that if the Party sworn doth take that Oath upon hopes of some advantage, or for evading of danger and punishment, and afterwards rescinds it, they think themselves to be involved in the Perjury, and accessary to his damnation: Our Civil Law hath a Canon consonant to this, which is, Mortal peccatum est ei prastare juramentum, quem scio verisimiliter violaturum; 'Tis a mortal sin to administer an Oath to him who I probably know will break it; To this may allude another wholesome saying, A false Oath is damnable, a true Oath dangerous, none at all the safest. How much then have they to answer for, who of late years have framed such formidable coercive general Oaths to serve them for engines of State to ●…y battery to the Consciences and Souls of poor men, and 〈…〉 the assent of the Sovereign, and opposed 〈…〉 to fo●●er Oaths they themselves had taken: these kind of Oaths the City hath swallowed lately in gross, and the Country in detaile, which makes me confidently believe that if ●ver that saying of the holy Prophet, The Land mourns for Oaths was appliable to any part of the habitable earth, it may be ●o●●plied to this desperate Island.  
But now I come to the main of my purpose, and to those Oaths your Lordship hath taken before this distracted time, which, the world knows, ●nd your conscience can testify, were divers; They were all of them Solemn, and some of them Sacramental Oaths (and indeed, every Solemn Oath among the Ancients was held a Sacrament:) They all employed, and imposed an indispensible fidelity, Truth and loyalty from you to your Sovereign Prince, your Liege Lord and Master the King: I will make some instances: Your Lordship took an Oath when Knight of the Bath to love your Sovereign above all earthly Greatures, and for His Right and dignity to live and die:  
By the Oath of Supremacy you swear to bear faith and true allegiance to the King's Highness, and to your power to defend all jurisdictions, Privileges, Preeminences and Authorities belonging to His Highness.  
Your Lordship took an Oath when Privy Counsellor, to be a true and faithful Servant unto Him, and if you knew or understood of anymanner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against His Majesty's Person, Honour Crown, or Dagnitie, you swore to let, and withstand the same to the uttermost of your power, and either cause it to be revealed to Himself, or to others of His Privy Counsel: The Oaths you took when Bedchamber-man, & L. Chamberlain bind you as strictly to His Person.  
Your Lordship may also call to memory when you were installed Knight of the Garter, (whereof you are now the oldest living except aK. of Denmarky you solemnly swore to defend the Honour, and Quarrels, the Rights and Lordship of your Sovereign: Now the Record tells us that the chiefest ground of instituting that Order by that heroic Prince Edward the Third was, that he might have choice gallant men, who by Oath and Honour should adhere unto him in all dangers, and difficulties, and that by way of reciprocation he should protect and defend them; Which made Alfonso Duke of Calabria so much importune Henry the Eight to install him one of the Knights of the Gatter, that he might engage King Harry to protect him against Charles the Eighth, who threatened then the conquest of Naples.  
How your Lordship hath acquitted yourself of the performance of these Oaths your conscience (that bosom record) can make the best affidavit; Some of them oblige you to live and die with King Charles, but what Oaths or any thing like an Oath binds you to live and die with the House of Commons, as your Lordship often gives out you will, I am yet to learn: Unless that House which hath not power as much as to administer an Oath (much less to make one) can absolve you from your former Oaths, or haply by their omnipotence dispense with you for the observance of them. Touching the Political capacity of the King I fear that will be a weak plea for your Lordship before the Tribunal of heaven, and they who whispers such Chimaeras into your ears abuse you in gross; but put case there were such a thing as political capacity distinct from the personal, which to a true rational man is one of the grossest Bulls that can be, yet these sorementioned Oaths relate most of them merely unto the King's Person, the individual Person of King Charles as you are His domestic Counsellor, and cubicular Servant.  
My Lord, I take leave to tell your Lordship (and the Spectator sees sometimes more than the Gamester) that the world extremely marvels at you more than others, and it makes those who wish you best to be transformed to wonder, that your Lordship should be the first of your Race who deserted the Crown, which one of your Progenitors said, he would still follow though it were thrown upon a hedge: Had your Princely Brother been living he would have been sooner torn by wild horses than have banded against it, or abandoned the King his Master, and fallen to such gross Idolatry as to worship the Beast with many heads. The world also stands astonished that you should confederate to bring into the bowels of the Land, and make Eulogiums of that hungry people which have been from all times so cross and fatal to the English Nation, and particularly to your own honour: Many thousands do wonder that your Lordship should be brought to persecute with so much animosity and hatred that reverend Order in God's Church which is contemporary with Christianity itself, and whereunto you had once designed, and devoted one of your dearest Sons so solemnly.  
My Lord, if this Monster of Reformation (which is like an infernal Spirit clad in white, and hath a cloven head as well as feet) prevails you shall find the same destiny will attend poor England, as did Bohemia which was one of the flourishingst Kingdoms upon this part of the earth; The Common people there repined at the Hierarchy and riches of the Church, thereupon a Parliament was packed where Bishops were demolished, what followed? The Nobles and Gentry went down next, and afterwards the Crown itself, and so it became a popular confused anarchical State, and a Stage of blood along time, so that at last, when this Maggot had done working in the brains of the foolish people, they were glad to have recourse to Monarchy again after a world of calamities; though it degenerated from a successive Kingdom to an Elective. Me thinks, my Lord, under favour that those notorious visible judgements which have fallen upon these Refiners of reformed Religion should unbeguile your Lordship, and open your eyes: For the hand of heaven never appeared so clearly in any humane actions: Your Lordship may well remember what became of the Ho●hams, and Sir Alexander Carry who were the two fatal wretches that began the War first, one in the North, the other in the South; Your Lordship may be also pleased to remember what became of Brooks the Lord, and Hampden, the first whereof was dispatched by a deaf & dumb man out of an ancient Church which he was battering, and that suddenly also, for he fell stone dead in the twinkling of an eye; Now, one of the greatest cavils he had against our liturgy was a clause of a Prayer there against sudden death, besides the fag end of his Grace in that journey was, that if the design was not pleasing to God, he might perish in the action: For the other wiseacre he be-sprinkled with his blood, and received his death upon the same clod of earth in Buckingham-shire where he had first assembled the poor Country people like so many Geese to drive them gaggling in a mutiny to London with the Protestation in their Caps, which hath been since torn in flitters, and is now grown obsolet and quite out of use. Touching Pym & Stroud, those two worthy Champions of the Utopian cause, the first being opened, his stomach and guts were found to be full of pellets of blood, the other had little or no brain at all left in his skull being dead, & less when he was living: For Hollis who carried the first scandalous Remonstrance (that work of night, & the verdict of a starved jury) to welcome the King from Scotland, and was the first of the five Members who were impeached by his Majesty, he hath been since, your Lordship knows, the chief of the Eleven Members impeached by themselves, but with this difference, that they had justice against him, though the King could get none: But now this St. Hollis with the rest are a kind of Runagates beyond the Seas, scorned by all mankind, and baffled every where, yea, even by the Boors of Holland, and not daring to peep in any populous Town but by owl-light.  
Moreover I believe your Lordship hath good cause to remember that the same kind of riotous Rascals which rabled the King out of town, did drive away the Speaker in like manner with many of their Memb sps, amongst whom your Lordship was fairly on his way, to seek shelter of their Janissaries: Your Lop. must needs find what deadly feuds fall daily 'twixt the Presbyterian and Independent, the two fiery brands that have put this poor Isle so long in combubustion. But 'tis worthy your Lordship's special notice how your dear Brethren the Scots (whom your Lordship so highly magnified in some of your public Speeches) who were at first brought in for Hirelings against the King for them, offer themselves now to come in against them for the King: Your Lordship cannot be ignorant of the sundry clashes that have been 'twixt the City and their Memberships, and 'twixt their Memberships and their men of war; who have often waved & disobeyed their commands: How this tatterdimallian Army hath reduced this cowed City, the cheated Country, and their once all-commanding Masters to a perfect pass of slavery, to a true asinin condition; They crow over all the ancient Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom, though there be not found amongst them all but two Knights; and 'tis well known there be hundreds of private Gentlemen in the Kingdom, the poorest of whom, is able to buy this whole Host with the General himself and all the Commanders: But 'tis not the first time, that the Kings and Nobility of England have been baffled by petty companions: I have read of Jack Straw, Wat Tyler and Ket the Tanner, with divers others that did so, but being suppressed it tended to the advantage of the King at last; and what a world of examples are there in our story, that those Noblemen who banded against the Crown, the revenge of heaven ever found them out early or late at last.  
These, with a black cloud of reciprocal judgements more, which have come home to these Reformers very doors, show, that the hand of divine justice is in't, and the holy Prophet tells us, When God's judgements are upon earth, than the Inhabitants shall learn justice.  
Touching your Lordship in particular, you have not, underfavor, escaped without some already, and I wish more may not follow; your Lordship may remember you lost one Son at Bridgenorth, your dear Daughter at Oxford, your Son-in-law at Newbury, your Daughter-in-law at the  of an infamous disease, how sickly your eldest Son hath been; how part of your House was burnt in the country, with others which I will not now mention.  
I will conclude this point with an observation of the most monstrous number of Witches that have swarmed since these Wars against the King, more (I dare say) then have been in this Island since the Devil tempted Eve; for in two Counties only there have been near upon three hundred arraigned, and eightscore executed; what a barbarous devilish office one had, under colour of examination, to torment poor silly women with watch, pinch, and other artifices to find them for Witches: How others by a new invention of villainy were connived at for seizing upon young children, and hurrying them on shipboard, where they were so transformed that their Parents could not know them, and so were carried over for new schismatical Plantations. My Lord, there is no villainy that can enter into the imagination of man hath been left here uncommitted; no crime from the highest Treason to the meanest Trespass but these Reformers are guilty of. What horrid acts of profaneness have been perpetrated up and down! the Monuments of the dead have been rifled! Horses have been watered at the Church Font, and fed upon the holy Table! Widows, Orphans, and Hospitals have been commonly robbed, and God's House hath been plundered more than any! with what infandous blasphemies hath the Pulpits rung, one crying out, that this Parliament was as necessary for our Reformation, as the coming of Christ was for our Redemption: Another belching out, that if God Almighty did not prosper this Cause, 'twere fitting he should change places with the Devil: Another, that the worst things our Saviour did, was the making of the Dominical prayer, and saving the Thief upon the Cross. O immortal God, is it possible that England should produce such Monsters, or rather such infernal fiends shaped with humane bodies! yet your Lordship sides with these men, though they be enemies to the Cross, to the Church, and to the very name of Jesus Christ; I'll instance only in two who were esteemed the Oracles of this holy Reformation, Peter, and Saltmarsh; The first is known by thousands to be an infamous, juggling and scandalous villain, among other feats he got the Mother and Daughter with Child, as it was offered to be publicly proved; I could speak much of the other, but being dead, let it suffice that he died mad and desperate. These were accounted the two Apostles of the times.  
My Lord, 'tis high time for you to recollect yourself, to enter into the private closet of your thoughts, and summon them all to counsel upon your pillow; consider well the slavish condition your dear Country is in, weigh well the sad case your liege Lord and Master is in, how He is bereaved of His Queen, His Children, His Servants, His Liberty, and of every thing in which there is any comfort; observe well, how nevertheless, God Almighty works in Him, by inspiring Him with equality and calmness of mind, with patience, prudence and constancy, how He makes His very crosses to stoop unto Him, when His Subjects will not: Consider the monstrousness of the Propositions that are tendered Him, wherein no less than Crown, Sceptre, and Sword, which are things in-alienable from Majesty, are in effect demanded, nay they would not only have Him transmit, and resign His very intellectuals unto them, but they would have Him make a sacrifice of His soul, by forcing Him to violate that solemn sacramental Oath He took at His Coronation when He was no minor, but come to a full maturity of reason and judgement: make it your own case, my Lord, and that's the best way to judge of His: Think upon the multiplicity of solemn astringing Oaths your Lordship hath taken, most whereof directly and solely enjoin faith and loyalty to His Person; oh my Lord! wrong not your soul so much, in comparison of whom your body is but a rag of rottenness.  
Consider that acts of loyalty to the Crown are the fairest columns to bear up a Nobleman's name to future ages, and register it in the temple of immortality. Reconcile yourself therefore speedily unto your liege Lord & Master, think upon the infinite private obligations you have had both to Sire and Son: The Father kissed you often, kiss you now the Sun lest he be too angry; And Kings, you will find, my Lord, are like the Sun in the heavens, which may be clouded for a time, yet is he still in his sphere, and will break out again, and shine as gloriously as ever; Let me tell your Lordship that the people begin to grow extreme weary of their Physicians, they find the remedy to be far worse than their former disease; nay, they stick not to call some of them mere Quacksalvers, rather than Physicians; Some go further, and say they are no more Parliament, than a Pye-powder Court at Bartholomew-fair, there being all the essential parts of a true Parliament wanting in this, as fairness of elections, freedom of speech, fullness of Members, nor have they any head at all; Besides, they have broken all the fundamental rules and privileges of Parliament, and dishonoured that high Court more than any thing else: They have ravished Magna Charta which they are sworn to maintain, taken away our birthright, and transgressed all the laws of heaven and earth: Lastly, they have most perjuriously betrayed the trust the King reposed in them, the trust their Country reposed in them, so that if reason and Law were now in date, by the breach of their Privileges, and by betraying the double trust that is put in them, they have dissolved themselves ipso facto I cannot tell how many thousand times, notwithstanding that monstrous grant of the Kings, that fatal Act of continuance; And truly my Lord, I am not to this day satisfied of the legality (though I am satisfied of the forcibleness) of that Act, whether it was in His Majesty's power to pass it or no; for the law ever presupposeth these clauses in all concessions of Grace, in all Patents, Charters, and Grants whatsoever the King passeth, Salvo jure regio, salvo jure coronae.  
To conclude, as I presume to give your Lordship these humble cautions, & advice in particular, so I offer it to all other of your rank, office & orders, who have souls to save, & who by solemn indispensable Oaths have engaged them to be true and loyal to the Person of King Charles. Touching His political capacity, which fancy hath been exploded in other Parliaments (except in that mad infamous Parliament where it was first hatched) and Acts passed that it should be high and horrible Treason to separate or distingnish the Person of the King from His Power; I believe, as I said before, this will not serve their turn at the dreadful Bar of divine Justice in the other world: Indeed that Rule of the Pagans makes for them, Si Jusjurandum violandum est, Tyrannidis causa violandum est, If an Oath be any way frangible, 'tis frangible for a Kingdom; We find by woeful experience that according to this maxim they have made themselves all kings by violation of so many Oaths; They have monopolised the whole power and wealth of the Kingdom into their own hands; They cut, shuffle, deal, and turn up what trump they please, being Judges and parties in every thing.  
My Lord, He who presents these humble advertisements to your Lordship, is one who is inclined to the Parliament of England in as high a degree of affection as possibly a freeborn Subject can be; One besides, who wisheth your Lordship's good, with the preservation of your safety and honour more really than He whom you intrust with your secretest affairs, or the white Jew of the Upper House who have infused such pernicious principles into you; moreover, one who hath some drops of blood running in his veins, which may claim kindred with your Lordship: And lastly, he is One who would kiss your feet, in lieu of your hands, if your L dp would be so sensible of the most desperate case of your poor Country, as to employ the interests, the opinion and power you have to restore the King your Master by English ways, rather than a hungry foreign people, who are like to bring nothing but destruction in the van, confusion in the rear, and rapine in the middle, should have the honour of so glorious a work,  
My Lord, So, humbly hoping your Lordship will not take with the left hand what I offer with the right, I rest Your most truly devoted Servant.  
FINIS.