A REMONSTRANCE TO THE PEOPLE.  Psal. 7.9. 
Oh let the wickedness of the Wicked come to an end, but establish the Just.  Job 34.30. 
That the Hypocrite reign not, lest the People be ensnared.  Psal. 21.7. 
For the King trusteth in the Lord, and through the mercy of the most high he shall not be moved.  
ORdered by the High Court of Reason, that twelve thousand Copies hereof be forthwith printed and published in the several Counties of this Kingdom respectively.  
LONDON. Printed in the Year 1649.   

A REMONSTRANCE TO THE PEOPLE.  
Royal and Loyal Fellow-subjects,  
WHat honest Heart doth not bleed to see this (lately glorious) Nation thus lie gasping? who can refrain from utterance, who conceives he thinks of any thing which may advance the reuniting of our distracted obedience? Suffer me also therefore to disclose my heart, in this sad Case, wherein every good Man hath an Interest, though the Great Ones have the guilt: the brains of a wise Man, and the bowels of a common Father, met together in one counsel to you, Fear GOD, and the KING; and meddle not with them that are given to change; here is our warrant (beyond a Gypsies knot, or a dough-baked Ordinance) we may be Royalists, and Religious too. But the destruction that dog's the contempt of this advice, you or your Children will live to see and suffer; in the desolations of your Country which is ready to be laid waste, the dissolution of its Government, which even at this instant tottereth, and in the miseries and judgements upon your Posterity which are ineffable & worthy of God; to the horrid production of these calamities you are all promiscuously made accessary; impeached by a Confederacy that would be thought meek in Murder, that usurp a Saintship in Sacrilege, and labour to screen themselves from obloquy, by an imputation of their villainies to your consent, and abetting. If we demand, why the last Parliament was called? They answer, to ease the Grievances of the People: If we inquire, who chased the KING from His Parliament? They must still answer, the People: If we ask, who pursued Him? ensnared Him? Imprisoned Him? who called for Justice against Him? who Butchered Him? Echo is the same, the People. Thus these Anachims' of Hell, these Zanzummins for the Devil, who flatter themselves under God's vengeance, and whose transgressions are Registered to all eternity, in the success of their impieties, practice upon your stupefied coldness, and take advantage through your fears to scandalise your Loyalty. If a tile only from the housetop fall on your heads, you are sensible; and now the Kingdom is falling, are you stupid? shall other men's Rebellions taint your Families, and pose succeeding Generations to distinguish between the Patriots of their Country, & the Cutthroats who waded in their Prince's blood? A Remonstrance to the People was the first invention to unsoder your obedience from your KING, that was Machiavel's Masterpiece, whereby they made you, and your Purses the rash Instruments of their ends; but never acquainted you with their bloody and confused purposes: there they revealed a visible design, but concealed their capital intentions. The Protestant Religion (which hath cost you so much blood and money, yet is now scoffed at under the reproach of Pulpit-doctrine) was in danger, Popery was coming in, the Government of the Church oppressed (tender Consciences) and off went Canterbury's Head. Evil Counsellors laboured to subvert the fundamental Laws (which they are now abrogating) and to introduce an Arbitrary Government (but they scorned to give this Honour to any but themselves) and away flew Strafford's Head. Thus they made a strict profession of Zeal, justice, and piety, and by a subtle inversion of the precept of God, they pretended to do some good, that much evil might come thereof. In one place they lay before your eyes their Jealousies, and Fears; when God knoweth the greatest fears were, lest thorough some cranny of their dissimulation, you should discern their fraudulency. In another place, they are full of immodest bitterness, peremptory presumption, popular insinuations, and a medley of slanders and flatteries, all tending to rumour and impression in seduceable Spirits. Thus at first they dissembled themselves into your unwary hearts, and now they force themselves into your purses, your houses, your barns, and your very beds; yet still you are led by them like the Ox that goeth to the slaughter, or the Fool that laugheth when he is carried to the whipping-post: but let me speak as to wise Men, and judge ye what I say, imagine how glorious a comparison is made both by God and man between those that put a Kingdom out of frame, and those that reduce it into order; think how diffusive that Honour would be over all the Christian world, and how firm & permanent that comfort would prove to your Posterity, if you return to your obedience, re-establish your KING, and by a just retaliation leave these Traitors Paramount, these Crumeni-mulgent Rebels to catch cold at their backs, and perish by themselves: but because duty taught and rightly understood, is a surer obligation than a blind custom of obedience; as a seeing Man may tread surer by a light, than a blind Man can by a Guide; I will in a compendious endeavour dig to the ground of the Constitution of this Kingdom, and show you the very root of your obedience, that seeing the reason, and the reasonableness of it, you may also see your errors, and seeing them forsake them, and with them your perfidious or blind Guides.  
And here I must declare myself to be such an Admirer of this Architecture, that whether it had the influence of a supernatural wisdom, whether it were contrived at once, or perfected by an act of time, I presume no frame of Government in the whole world doth transcend it for exactness of true policy; here is a regulated provision for the Sovereignty of the KING, and here is an ample dowry set apart for the People; here is the counterpoise of the Nobility to restrain Tyrannical excess, and here are also the Privileges of the People to curb the insolence of the Barons. But, lest I lose myself in admiration, I proceed, We must bear regard to Government as an indivisible beam of divine perfection; and as is the Constitution of it, such is the Ordinance of God; and as is the Ordinance, such aught to be the proportion of our Duty & Subjection. The customary distinctions of it are threefold; In relation to the Measure of it, it is either Absolute or Limited. In relation to the Manner of it, it is either Supreme or Subordinate. And in reference to the Means of acquiring it, it is either Elective or Successive: That of Prescription and that also of Conquest is reducible to these.  
Secondly, Government is either nomothetical, understanding by it the power of making new Laws, and interpreting the old; or Gubernative, intending by it the power of putting those Laws in execution. This leads us on to the subject wherein this Supreme power and trust is resident. And that again according to the usual partition is threefold: It is either in one, and then it is a Monarchy. Or in many (the best for Birth and abilities) than it is an Aristocracy. Or in the whole Community, and then it is a Democracy. That ours is a Monarchy Successive, needs no proof; but that it is Limited, I prove by these three Reasons, (many more might be alleged) First, in all Ages beyond record, the Laws and Customs of this Realm have been the rule and quadrature of Government. Liberties have been insisted on, and Grants thereof obtained. Limitations of Regal power are to be seen in a plentiful manner in Magna Charta, and the Petition of Right, and elsewhere. It is limited also in the Succession; for, a KING cannot leave his Crown to whom he pleaseth, He cannot disinherit his Son and Heir by any exorbitancy of will, by any violent emanations of love contracted by the merit or insinuations of a Privado, or Favourite, nor for any displeasure or indignation conceived against his Son, therefore the reason will hold à fortiori; if He cannot, His Subjects cannot; for, it is liquid, where they limited Him they also bounded themselves, otherwise the Government were Elective, and not successive: apply the present practice of the Army, and their Hackneys at Westminster to this rule, and let any sober Man judge whether they be not the only Subverters of the Fundamental Laws. Secondly, I conceive it will follow as clearly from hence, that when they Martyred the KING (who died in the defence of these Laws, and to protect you from that slavery into which they are about to entangle you) they dissolved the Parliament for that Grant which did capacitate them to sit durante beneplacito, could not be intended (neither is it pretended) to bind His Successors, for than they might sit in infinitum, which also would destroy both the Succession and the Monarchy, unless they would have us Governed (as the Spaniard saith) par Rey de havas, by a King of beans, or a twelfth-night King. Thus you see you are not bound in point of conscience to obey them as a Parliament, or to regard their Declarations and Ordinances any more than Ballads. True it is, they have you under a Power, but such an one as if Beasts will challenge, rational Men should be ashamed to subject themselves unto; such a power have Stotes and Polecats, and other vermin over young Chickens and other poultry: and is this a power for English Subjects to exercise over one another? Secondly, I prove it limited from the Oath that the Kings have taken at their Coronation, by which they swear to Govern by the Common and Statute Laws of the Land; for, those Laws were not devised or made solely by them, but by the joint concurrence of the other two Estates in Parliament, therefore to be confined to that which is not merely their own is limited. Lastly, I prove it limited by the Concession of CHRALES the I. (howl ye Murderers when ye hear Him named) who neither wanted knowledge in the just latitude of His Power, nor justice to acknowledge the extent of it: the words are in His Declaration from Newmarket, where He saith, [The Law is the measure of His Power:] words truly worthy of a King, but doth it not open the sluices of your eyes to remember what measure was returned to Him? well might He complain, heu patior telis vulnera facta meis! His mercy (by the obliquities of a Hellbred rout) is curdled into the Kingdom's misery, and the simplicity of His Grace made Him a sacrifice to the ingrateful violence of seducing, and seduced People: as the former Reasons are clear to show that the Supreme Authority of this Land is limited; so these following Reasons will also show it to be mixed.  
In the Answer of King CHAARLES the I. to the 19 Propositions, He there acknowledgeth, this Monarchy to be mixed with Aristocracy in the House of Lords, and Democracy in the House of Commons: From which words I reason thus, that Monarchy in which the three Estates are constituted, to the end that the power of One should moderate and restrain from excess the powers of the other, is mixed in the root and essence of it; but such is this Monarchy, as appeareth by the KING'S acknowledgement, and also by the Laws of the Land, therefore it is mixed.  
Secondly, that Monarchy where the Legislative power is in all three (jointly) is in the very radication of it compounded and mixed of those three; for that is the height of power, to which the other parts are subordinate & subservient, so that where this resideth in a mixed subject, that is in Three distinct concurrent Estates, the consent, Votes, and concourse of all most free, and none depending on the will of the other, that Monarchy in the very model and frame of it is of a mixed constitution; but such is the state of this Monatchy, as appears by the former acknowledgement, therefore plainly it follows that it is mixed.  
I shall briefly touch upon three things, wherein it is mixed, for further illustration of the proofs, and so conclude: First, it is mixed and qualified in the nomothetical power, so that an Act or an Ordinance cannot have the nature and form of a Law of this Land, if it proceed from any One, or Two of these, without the positive concurrence of the Third. Secondly, it is mixed in imposition of Taxes on your Estates; the KING by His Prerogative cannot require Contributions not granted to Him by Law; you may well wonder then how these squirting virginal Jacks at Westminster (that move only under the heavy threatening fingers of the Army) can require them: for, though the House of Commons in a Parliament be the Representation of the People, yet the People cannot invest their Representatives with a power which was not in themselves. Now the People have no power to do an Act which directly or indirectly doth put it in the will and pleasure of any One or Two of the Estates, to overthrow the Third. But it is now too evident unto your that the power of opening and shutting the Purse of the Kingdom is such a power, that if it be in One or Two of the Estates without the concurrence of the Third, than they, or that One, by that power may necessitate the other to comply to any Act, or to disable it from its own defence: by this error we have lived to see the damnable and cruel Butchery of the KING, the Abolishing of the House of Peers; and thus is the Riddle resolved, of King and Parliament, Parliament and Army, and Parliament and Kingdom.  
Lastly, it is mixed in the united power of transacting the weighty Affairs of the Kingdom, which in the Writ of Summons are termed the Ardoa Regni: for, I conceive that there are two kinds of Affairs which cannot be dispatched without the concurrence of the three Estates: First, such as concern the public safety and weal, so fare as a general damage or advantage extends to the whole body Politic by the well or ill managing thereof; for, then there is the same reason as in making of new Laws; for, why was not the power of making new Laws committed to the trust of One, but reserved for the unanimous agreement of all Three? but because the intent of the Architects was, that no new thing which was of public concernment, should be introduced as Authoritative, and binding, without the consent of the three Estates: therefore no transactions in this Kingdom can be equipollent to a Law, which are not enlivened, and informed with this threefold Authority. Secondly, such as are accompanied with a necessity of public charge as in time of War, for than is the Purse of the Kingdom required; but it is evident (as I proved before) that this must be done by the concurrence of all three, for otherwise it would be all one to put the power of our Estates in the hands of One, as to put the power of such undertake in His hands alone, which of necessity do introduce an engagement of public charge.  
I shall now lay down a few Supposals by way of recapitulation, and you shall not need to go to John Goodwin for a legal Catechism. Suppose then, first: that a People wearied to it by conquest, or led to it by free choice, both Nobles and Commons make a resignation of themselves by public Oath and agreement to our Sovereign, to be Governed by Him, and His Heirs for ever, by such and such fundamental Laws: here we find a fountainhead of Supremacy, though stopped in the streams of its exercise. Secondly, suppose that future contingent cases will happen requiring additional Laws, and therefore they covenant with their Sovereign, that in the constitution of postnate Laws, they both Nobles and Commons will reserve to themselves a free concurrence, and will not be subject to any such Laws as shall be framed by any One or Two of the Estates. Thirdly, suppose that although the Peers can assemble in their Personal capacities, yet the Commons through the greatness of their number cannot, and therefore it was further articled and agreed upon, that every Corporation should have power to delegate one, as their Representative in this public business, where the Nobles by themselves, and the Commons by their Substitutes assembling, the whole Body may convene for the establishing of new, and expounding of old Laws. Fourthly suppose, because the occasion of making new, or interpreting old Laws would not be constant and perpetual; and that it would carry an appearance of a monstrous Government where there were three Heads; they did establish these three Estates to be visibly existent, according to future emergencies; and because a Monarchy was designed and intended, and therefore a Supremacy of power must be reserved for One; it was concluded that these two Estates should be a Convention of His Subjects sworn to Him, and all former Laws, and the new which were to be enacted, should be called His Laws, and they bound by their Oath to obey Him in them as soon as they had received His Royal Assent. Fifthly suppose, because He was bound by His Oath to Govern by His Laws, that He by His Council should best know when there was need of making new Laws, therefore the power of Assembling and Dissolving these Estates was solely committed to His hands. Here is the model of this blessed Government, and now you may perceive you want not Laws, but your KING to protect you by His Laws. And what quintessence of delusion, what efficacy of error hath bewitched you, to betray and scandalise the succours of your reason; to forsake a certain, and duly attempered Liberty, and to receive a Bondage with rejoicing from the Sword point of a Rebel, as from a Benefactor! an Outlaw of Heaven, whose conscience the X. Commandments are no stronger to tie, than are ten Sunbeams to manacle the Murderers hands. I have seen the Crocodile weep, strain a face like an old Woman at it with a hard stool, and counterfeit the Publicans march upon his breast, with Lord be merciful to me a Sinner! but alas! this is but the brocage of ambition, these are but feigned, and affected semblances to beguile the world, no true qualities ingenerated in his nature; for, you may sooner find a Hog to be a High Priest among the Jews, or a Horse in a Swans nest, than true devotion in an ambitious breast; the reason is obvious why these Men should introduce a Change, because every branch of the Law doth upbraid their guilt; but for you to abett this Change is as unreasonable, as for him that knoweth a near, plain, and secure way to his house, yet will stay till midnight, and ramble through woods and forests which swarm with Thiefs & Robbers. We read in Samuel, that when Saul was to be Anointed King, the Holy Ghost saith, among the Children of Israel there was not a godlier Person than he; this, though it failed in the example of Saul, will thus fare justify Phisyognomie, that formosa facies, bone indolis est muta commendatio: And truly you cannot be so much enamoured of Oliver's features, as to think yourselves secure in his virtues; for, by the sign that nature hath hung out, conjecture may be easily made of nature's designment for that head: It is observable also when Saul was to be Anointed he was seeking of Asses, and the Prophet brought him tidings of them: now it is an even wager Oliver is upon the same employment, and if John Goodwin his Seer can but bring tidings of these Asses, Cromwell also may be Anointed; a little unguentum album, from the Apothecaries, is excellent for S. Anthony's fire in the Nose, probatum est: but if this Seer chance to meet with some of Balaam's breed, that turn aside from the Sword of his strange Spirit (as many such there are) than it may be feared Oliver with all his vamping Hypocrisy will never be able to clap a new sole of Government upon this Kingdom: The numbering of the People cost King David threescore and ten thousand of his Subjects lives, (his end was Pride) but if you would spy day at a little hole and number the loyal hearts, it may save the lives of so many Englishmen (for the preservation of your Country is your aim) if when People speak evil of the KING, the Birds of the air tell tales of it; doubtless the Angels of heaven would convey such a Catalogue of duty, if you want not hearts to send it to your KING: Here is no place to propound the means to effect it; for, He that showeth his treasure among Thiefs, is guilty of his own pillage.  

OLIVERUS CROMWELL Anagr. Velo lucri move rus.  

HIs ominous nature here deciphered stands,  
Obeying Satan's wiles in his commands.  
The People's Liberty he makes his train,  
But seeks through blood a Kingdom to obtain:  
Trace him, but trust him not; his Soul is true  
To profit, and ambition; false to you.  
For power that may control, when it descends,  
Their bondage whom it fawns on, it intends.   

But when this Spider, and the web he spins  
You have destroyed, your Liberty gins.    
FINIS.