THE HUMBLE PETITION OF The Inhabitants of the County of Hertford to His Majesty.  
WITH HIS majesties Gracious Answer thereunto.  
ALSO, The humble Petition of the Inhabitants of the County of Bedford, to the Kings most Excellent Majesty.  
With his Majesties Gracious Answer thereunto.  
Printed by His Majesties command, at OXFORD, Januar. 7.  
By Leonard Lichfield, Printer to the Univerty. at land. Jan 11th 1642.   

To the KINGS most Excellent Majesty, The humble Petition of Your Majesties Subjects within Your County of Hertford.  
Humbly sheweth,  
YOur Majesties most loyal Subjects and Petitioners giving your Majesty most humble thanks for the many good Laws you have lately granted, and also for Your gracious profession to maintain the Protestant Religion; and seriously considering the great distractions and distempers of this Your kingdom, and the danger wherein it( with Your own Royal Person) now standeth; as also being very sensible of the great effusion of blood, lately made betwixt Your Majesties Own Subjects, and of the great calamities likely to ensue upon this unnatural and civill War, unless by your Majesties clemency and mercy it be forthwith stayed, your Subjects being in short time likely to fall into great misery and want, as well by reason of the decay of trading, as also by the violence and rapine of unruly and dissolute multitudes which hope to raise themselves by the ruin of your Majesties good Subjects.  
Therefore your Majesties Subjects and Petitioners do in all humility address themselves unto your royal Majesty, earnestly desiring, that all hostility may cease, and that some means of accommodation and Peace may be obtained, whereby Gods honour, and the true Protestant Religion may be maintained, Your Majesties sacred Person, Honour, and Estate preserved, and your Parliaments just privileges, with the Laws of this Your Realm upheld and put in execution, that so your people being f●eed from their fears, and s cured in their Estates, may with hand and heart testify their obedience both to God and their King.  
And your Subjects shal daily pray for Your majesties long and happy Reign over us.   

His Majesty hath expressly commanded me to give this His Answer to this Petition.  
HIs Majesty graciously accepts the acknowledgement of the Petition●rs, and is very glad, that in a County, so near the violence which hath soug●t to oppress● His Majesty, and where so great industry hath been used to corrupt his good Subjects, and to infuse into them thoughts and resolutions of disloyalty against Him there is yet so grateful a sense of His Majesties justice, and so true a sense of the calamities of the Kingdom. And His Majesty assures the Petitioners, that He so far concurs with them in all their requests, that they do not more desire to receive, then His Majesty doth to grant all they ask of him.  
Of the present distractions and dis●empers, in which the Petitioners express an honest and loyal care of the safety of His Majesties Person,( a thing so far from being of late regarded, that God onely hath preserved Him from being destroyed by the bloody hands of rebels,) His Majesty doubts not but the Petitioners know from what fountain they have sprung, and by the grievances and pressures exercised upon their own County, in which His Majesty cannot be suspected to have the least hand, so much as by accident, will quickly discern, that when that part of the Law which should defend His Majesty is so easily mastered, & trodden drown, the other part which should secure His Subjects will insensibly moulder away, and give them up to the same violence; And that when they shal too inconsiderately look upon the public sufferings, they do but invite prosperous ill instruments to bring the misery home to their own doors.  
That al● Hostility may cease, cease for ever, and a blessed and happy accommodation and Peace be made, that Gods honour, and the Protestant Religion may be maintained, that the just privileges of Parliament, and the Laws of the Land may be upheld and put in execution, that so His good people may be freed from their fears, and secured in their estates, is not, cannot be more the wish and prayer of the Petitioners, then it is the earnest and incessant endeavour of His Majesty. And when the Petitioners remember, that His M●jest●es compassion of the miseries of a civil War, kept him so long from endeavouring to raise an Army, that He was almost swallowed up by a desperate rebellion, and nothing but the immediate hand of God could have supplied Him with men, arms, or money for His defence; and when they consider the strange licence given or countenanced in the exercise of religion, the scorn and contempt the very Protestant Religion itself suffers by Brownists, Anabaptists and Sectaries,( who in truth have destroyed the civil Peace too;) when they look upon the strange Invasion upon the freedom and privilege of Parliament, by the violence and faction of such men, and see the laws of the Land with a loud voice vilified and trampled upon, they must confess, 'tis no more in His Majesties power to satisfy the Petitioners in their most just desires, then to preserve His Own person, Honour, and Estate from that fury which threatens that, and all the rest, and that what the Petitioners now ask, is the only Argument of His Majesties taking up just, necessary, and desensive arms.  
But if the Petitioners shal join with His Majesty, and assist Him to assist them; if they shal resolve to defend the known Laws of the Land( as the onely excellent rule) and not to submit to any extravagant, arbitrary power whatsoever; If they shal set a true prise upon their religion,( sealed with the blood of so many glorious ma ) and on the behalf of it, protest against all the distempers o● Brownists, Anabaptists, and Sectaries; If they shal help His Majesty to reduce the whole fabric of Church and State according to the model of Qu. Elizabeths time,( solong and seriously proposed by His Majesty) in which the foundations were laid of all that happiness and glory, which the whole Nation enjoyed so many yeeres after, and to which His Majesty hath made so great an Addition of excellent Laws; His Majesty doubts not that any Faction shall prevail against them, but that other Counties, following the example of the Petitioners, in short time his Majesty, the Petitioners, and the whole kingdom, will find the accomplishment of all that is desired by this Petition.  
FALKLAND.   

To the KINGS most excellent Majesty. The humble Petition of divers of Your Majesties loyal Subjects inhabiting the County of Bedford, amounting to the number of 3800.  
Most humbly SHeweth  
unto your Majesty, 〈◇〉 are the miseries your Subjects suffer, and their fears are beyond their miseries. We are not able to relate what unsp●akable Calamiti●s, a war, much more a Civill-Warre, and that in the bowels of your kingdom, will inevitably produce, your Majesty having been lately a sad spectator of some unhappy effects thereof; besides continual fears and perplexities, decay of trade and tillage, exhausting of Treasure; impoverishing of your Subjects, and dispeopling of your Land, whereby it may lie open to foreign Invasion, and your Subjects disabled to defend your kingdom; Pestilence and Famine being the undoubted consequences of such a war in which those of the nearest relations are likely to embrew their hands in each others blood, and the whole kingdom( like a distracted man) lay violent hands upon itself. Your Majesty hath been graciously pleased to declare your sense of those heavy pressures under which your Subjects groaned before this Parliament: And not to aclowledge with due thanks your Majesties Acts of grace in the removal of some and promise of remedy for the rest, were the highest point of ingratitude, especially considering your Majesties frequent and solemn professions to that effect divulged to the world. Now amongst the miserable Calamities which yet remain without remedy, the difference betwixt your Majesty and your great counsel( the Parliament) is the greatest, as that indeed which blocks up the way, that should led to the remedy of all the rest: pardon therefore your distressed Subiects,( most Gracious sovereign) if in these heavy times they become your most humble( though importunate) Petitioners, That your Majesty abandoning all jealousies would be pleased to lend a gracious ear to such Propositions as your Parliament shall present, tending to your majesties Honour, the establishment of the true Protestant Religion, the Freedom and privilege of Parliament, and the future good of the Common-wealth; by this the wrath of God may be appeased, his judgements averted, the peace of Church and State procured, Gods true Religion maintained, your majesties royal Throne established, and your Subiects may more cheerfully, without distraction, yield unto you( as by their Allegiance they are bound) all due Obedience and Subiection. These are the earnest desires of your most humble Suppliants, who daily pray for your majesties safety, and the peace of all your kingdoms,  
At the Court at Oxford the 24 of Decemb. 1642.   

His Majesty hath graciously considered this Petition, and hath commanded me to return this His Answer.  
THat He sully concurs with the Petitioners i● their sense of the present Distractions and Cala●●●ies of this kingdom, the prevention whereof His Majesty hath so much laboured, that well foreseing the miseries of a Civil-Warre, himself( notwithstanding so many provocations, w ll known to the Petitioners, and to all the World) forbore to raise an Army for his defence, till He was almost swallowed up by a desperate and unnatural rebellion. What He hath done since, towards the removing those horrid preparations, and dissolving the Clouds of jealousies and discontent, by His several Messages, to invite and desire a Treaty, and how those Messages have been entertained, is well and generally known too. And if the care of others had been as great in the observation and execution of the laws, as His Majesty hath been to make such laws, The Peace and Security of the Kingdom had not been now disturbed, neither would it have been in the Power of a few furious Persons to have raised this misunderstanding between His Great council and His Majesty. And therefore the Petitioners shall do well( not being deterted by the reception other Petitions have found) to apply themselves to both Houses of Parliament, for composing the present Distempers; And if they can prevail with them to make such Propositions to His Majesty, as He may in Honour and Iustice consent to, That is, such Propositions as may tend to the establishment of the true Protestant Religion, the Laws of the Land, His Majesties just Rights, the Liberty and Property of the subject, and the just privileges of Parliament; If His majesty consent not to them, He is contented to be thought a Promoter of this present War. But if no such Propositions shal be made to Him,( all His desires that such should be made having been rejected) He hopes the Petitioners, and all the World will be easily disabused, and will not suffer them, who have raised and do foment this odious Civil-war, to lay the Envy, and impute the Miseries of this War upon His majesty, whose heart bleeds at the sufferings of His People.  
EDW. NICHOLAS.   
FINIS.