THE REMONSTRANCE AND PROTESTATION, Of the GENTRY, AND COMMONALTY OF THE COUNTIES OF 

Buckingham,  
Bedford,  
Hartford,  
and Cambridge.    
showing the reasons why they take up arms, and their Resolutions thereupon.  
Tendered by them at their meeting with the Parliaments Forces, to the view of the world, Decemb. 7.  
LONDON. Printed by L. N. and R. C. for F. Eaglesfield, and are to be sold at his shop at the sign of the Marigold, in Pauls Church-yard. December 9. 1642.   

The Remonstrance and Protestation of the Gentry & Commonalty of the Counties of Buckingham, Bedford, Hartford, and Cambridge, showing the reasons why they take up arms, and their resolutions thereupon.  
IT is notoriously known to all men how great the violence, oppressions, plunderings, and insolences are that those wicked men, foreigners, Malignants, Papists and Traitors, who call themselves the Kings Army, have and do daily exercise upon the people of this kingdom, born to the liberty and fruition of their own laws; and that Commissions for raising of more Forces are daily issued to known Papists, whereby not only our Religion is in imminent danger to be altered to Popery, and all our just privileges overthrown, but our wives ravished, our children murdered, and our estates absolutely ruined; and His Majesty, who ought in his duty to God and his Country to be the Father of his people, is now made the protector of the blasphemous and impious Crew, and of all their bloody and horrid actions, witness that cruel slaughter of his own subjects at Braintford, even during a Treaty.  
We therefore( out of a true sense of the Kingdoms and our own dangers) have associated ourselves, and taken up arms, with full resolution to prosecute the enemies of our Religion and Country, and do hereby solemnly protest and covenant before God, and one with another, that we will willingly and resolutely sacrifice our lives in this religious and just quarrel, and that wee will never lay down these arms, till this which is called the Kings Army be dissolved, and till the principal advisers, actors and fomenters in these our heavy calamities, such as are that blasphemous and plundering Prince Rupert be banished, and the earl of Bristol, the Lord Digby, Master Piercie, Wilmot, o'neill, and Master Endymion Porter the illegal Keeper of the great seal, and Culpeper, and those notorious Papists commanding in that Army bee brought or left to a due course of justice, unless we shall be commanded by both Houses of Parliament to the contrary, which wee hope wee never shall.  
And whereas there are divers of the Scottish Nation, who bear office in that Army, against whom wee ought to expect justice; wee( out of that brotherly affection wee bear to that Nation) do leave them to their just summons and censure, conceiving that kingdom bound thereunto by that near tie of Religion and Friendship with us, and by the Treaty lately so happily concluded betwixt us.  
Lastly, we do invite all our fellow Subjects of this kingdom, as having an equal share with us in the happiness or calamities thereof, to take arms upon the same necessary grounds, and to enter with us into the same Covenant, conjuring them by their zeal to the glory of God, their affection to the honour and prosperity of their native Country, by their loves to their wives, children, estates and liberties, to continue with us upon our just defence, till these calamities bee redressed, whereby we may all expect the blessing of God upon us and our posterity.  
FINIS.