A DECLARATION Of the Noble Knights, Sir MARMADUKE LANGDALE, AND Sir LEWIS DIVES; In vindication of the Right Honourable, JAMES, EARL of DERBY: AND Remonstrating their Resolutions to keep the ISLE of MAN, against all opposition, for HIS MAJESTY'S Service. August the 5th. 1649.  
LONDON. Printed in the Year, 1649.   

A DECLARATION Of the Noble Knights, Sir MARMADUKE LANGDALE, AND Sir LEWIS DIVES, etc.  
BY virtue of two Commissions dated at Hague, 5. June 1649. directed to us from our dread Sovereign Lord, CHARLES, of that name the SECOND, by the grace of GOD, KING of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, defender of the Faith: Whereby we were enjoined to make our speedy repair to the Isle of Man, and there to give our best assistance both in Counsel and Personal Service, to the Right Honourable, JAMES, Earl of Derby, the true and noble Lord thereof, in keeping of that Island for His MAJESTY'S service, wherein was sweetly and consequently involved, the defence of the true Protestant Religion, in substance and form as it was professed in the days of Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King Charles the First, Princes of blessed and glorious memory; the establishing His Majesty in His Thrones, invested with His just Power and Greatness, from which He is most injuriously and traitorously kept; the restoring Parliaments to their ancient Privileges, which are most violently broken; the maintenance of the fundamental Laws most strangely violated, and redeeming the people, now most barbarously vassalaged, to their ancient Freedom; and lastly, the bringing to justice the Murderers of the KING His Father, which horrid and savage act, we protest before God and the whole world, we abhor from our souls, and tremble to hear of: In obedience to which high Command, and at the serious persuasions of our judgements and consciences, with all convenient speed, we made our repair to the Isle of Man. Where we found the Right Honourable, the Earl of Derby (who gave us very respective and cheerful entertainment) and whose fidelity, and loyalty, we must ever acknowledge and admire; contesting and struggling with the tedious temptations & importunate solicitations of one Henry Ireton, who pretends himself to be Commissary General to that Army under the Command of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, to whom, in the name of the Parliament of England, as he is pleased to call that Juncto at Westminster, he required this Island to be delivered; and for his Lordship's encouragement therein, he was promised an Act of Indemnity for what he had formerly acted, in relation to His late Majesty's service, and to be repossessed of his whole Estate without Composition: In assurance of his Lordship's scorn and odium whereof, his Lordship was pleased to show us the Copy of a Letter, which two days before our arrival, he had returned by Ireton's Messenger for their final Answer: which Letter, (the testimony of his honour and loyalty) we read over with very much alacrity: and advised his Lordship to print it together with a Declaration, for satisfaction of His Majesty and His three Kingdoms; and to clear his honour of that blemish, with which some malcontented persons might possibly endeavour to stain it.  
In pursuit of which counsel, his Lordship was pleased forthwith to draw up a Declaration, which, together with the forementioned Letter, was speedily dispatched to London and committed to the Press, where, as appears by some of them, that have since come to our hands, it was printed without the least adulteration; and, whereas to our grief we have since heard, that there are some that have not been wanting, with very much confidence to report, that it was a mere fiction, contrived by some Mercury, to delude the people, and was no whit the sense of the Earl of Derby: To which we here declare, that we verily believe, that report to be framed in the Juncto, or by some of their Adherents, to deceive the people, (whom his Lordship was pretended to delude) that so they might encourage their Abettors, and discourage His Majesty's loyal Subjects from repairing hither to our assistance: And though it is very probable, that our Enemies will by the same device endeavour to darken the credit of this our present Declaration, yet they shall assuredly find the contents of both fulfilled in our faithful keeping this Island for His Majesty's best advantage, and their worst offence; and we hope, that though our Enemies do find encouragement in their misbelief hereof, yet our loyal-hearted Friends will be no ways over-swayed by doubt or the credit of their report, but will with speed & cheerfulness repair hither to an unanimous conjunction with us, where they shall find such encouragement as his Lordship promised, and with magnanimity and honour we will resolutely unite our daring Spirits to the final overthrow of the Rebel's interest, and their tyrannical power both by Sea and Land.  
And now we cannot but express, with how deep a sense of our Native Country's miseries our souls are affected, nor can we but lament the condition of posterity, whose Fathers have shamefully forfeited the ancient and glorious Liberty which was purchased by their Forefathers; and left them bound in the fetters of a most miserable bondage: nor can we believe but that many of those men, who were, in the beginning of these unhappy Divisions between KING and Parliament, carried away from their Loyalty by an overmuch credulity to their fair and plausible pretences, have been long since sensible that it was their own ambitious ends they then prosecuted, and not the welfare of the now miserable Kingdom; nor can we but admire, nor could we have believed, (had we not been the sad Witnesses thereof) that any men could be so strangely impudent, as to act so flat contrary to all their Oaths, Covenants, Vows, Protestations and Declarations, to continue the Government of the Kingdom, and the just Power and Prerogative of the KING and His Posterity, in the perfect fullness of their due glory and splendour; and yet notwithstanding all this, overthrew the very foundation of Government, decapitate the KING, and cashier His Posterity; and with savage barbarity declare and proclaim [that it shall be lawfuull for any Man to surprise and kill our present dread-Soveraigne the KING, and His Princely Brother the DUKE of York, as Traitors and Spies, wherever they shall meet them within the limits of these Kingdoms] such a piece of Treason, as we are confident, the most horrid, monstrous, and execrable Traitors that ever trod upon the face of the Earth would have blushed to have owned; nor is this all, but even in the first year of England's Freedom, (according to their own stile) after they have drained the Kingdom of its treasure, by their strange and unheardof ways for the raising of moneys, and notwithstanding the many and great Compositions which they have and daily do receive, the sale of the Jewels and other ornaments of State, the King, Queen, Dukes, Bishops, Deans and Chapters Lands, besides His Majesty's Customs, yet to continue the Excise, and beyond all that, to impose and continue an illegal Tax; and so great as was never yet imposed in the time of most urgent necessity since the Norman Conquest; and beyond all this, have brought in a most arbytrary and tyrannical Government, in taking away the Lives of their Sovereign and His Peers by new and illegal Courts; and have drawn the Freeborn People of England in to a most miserable bondage and slavery, far worse than the Turks, or any Nation under the Sun.  
And as in State they have overthrown all good & wholesome Government, so likewise in Church they have shut out all decent and uniform order, and let in a general and loathsome confusion; having imprisoned & sequestered all the Reverend, learned, and orthodox Divines, and suffer in their places, none but a peevish ignorant, and factious Clergy, who flatter them in their iniquities, and delude the people in abusing the sense of holy Writ, and preaching nothing but Rebellion and sedition; so that in stead of the ancient Rites of the Church, the Divine Service, wholesome Doctrines and holy Sacraments, which they have quite cast out as Popish, Superstitious, and Antichristian, they have introduced nothing but factions, seditions, schisms, heresies, and unparalleled blasphemies both against the Lord & his Anointed, and have granted a general toleration of all Religions, and (as we hear) have not only permitted, but ordered the Turkish Koran to be printed in English: and notwithstanding the many scandals that they have often cast upon His late Majesty's reputation for upholding the Irish Rebellion, they have entered into a League & Confederacy with Owen Roe Oneale, that barbarous and bloody Rebel, to destroy all the honest and loyal Protestants; so that the world may plainly see that they have cheated them with their hypocritical pretences to Religion, Fast & Thanksgivings, not regarding Oaths, Covenants, Protestations nor Declarations, nor caring what damnable designs they pass to the support of their rebellious interest: so that by Sacrilege, Rebellion, Murder, Perjury, Theft, Oppression, Tyranny & Regicide, they have cozened the people of their ancient Laws and Liberties, and subjected them to the miserable slavery of their tyrannical wills.  
And now we do declare, that in the beginning of unhappy differences being fully satisfied of the justness of His late Majesty's cause, in our judgements and conscience, according to our duty and allegiance we took up Arms on His Majesty's Party, where we continued faithfully, acting to the utmost of our power what ever might make for His Majesty's advantage, and have since manifested our unstained Loyalty in our patiented sufferings, not having neglected any thing even in our most clouded condition, which might renew His Majesty's interest in the Field: and we do protest in the presence of Almighty God, that we shall always use the same fidelity and industry in the trust reposed in us by our present dread Sovereign, holding ourselves bound in the same bonds of fealty to His Majesty that we were to the late King His Father, of ever blessed yet bleeding memory; nor shall we lay down Arms, but by God's assistance faithfully and resolutely pursue His Majesty's Enemies, till we have reduced all that are in Rebellion to their due obedience, brought the Murderers of His late Majesty to speedy & impartial justice, and absolutely destroyed their interest both by Land and Sea: nor can we imagine but that all honest men who have any sense of His Majesty's sufferings, their own loyalty, and their Country's misery, will cheerfully give their assistance both in purse and person, in carrying on this pious & honourable Engagement, wherein is so deeply concerned maintenance of the true Protestant Religion, the preservation of His Majesty's Royal Person from murder, together with His just Rights and Prerogatives, the Privileges of Parliaments, the Law of the Land, the Liberty of the Subject, and the suppression of Rebellion; not questioning but that God will at length own his own cause, and remove all those clouds which have hitherto darkened the splendour thereof, that so its true lustre may plainly & fully appear to the eye of every man's judgement, to his own glory, His Majesty's honour, & the good of the people.  
From Douglas in the Isle of Man. August the 5. 1649.  
FINIS.