A LETTER To his EXCELLENCY The Lord General MONCK. My Lord, AMongst the throng of persons that crowd to tell their Grievances, and to beg your relief, as an Englishman I cannot be unconcerned, nor you in Justice refuse to hear me: I do not intend to trouble you with a long series of the unhappy War, your own Experience in that is able to inform you; but only to give you some little account faithfully of what hath happened since Lambert's last Interrupting that which so daringly assumes the Name of a PARLIAMENT, with more Impudence than Justice, with more Madness than Merit: When Lambert had by violence forced the Members from sitting in the House, and as indiscreetly left them at liberty, you were then the only person who might visibly restore them, than they looked upon you as their Redeemer, which you really were. Having now once more by your favour gras'pd a power which they believed they should not outlive, to secure themselves as well from you as others, they commanded you up, and under a pretence of taking you into an Administration of Affairs with them, in stead of a General which you were in the North, and his Excellency, they made you a single Commissioner, the last of four; and lest that number, whereof three were a Quorum, should not balance you, they added another; so that you must be overawed in Vote, and submit to those who never yet durst openly make you their Enemy, and are unfit to be your Friends. When they saw (with Eyes full of Malice and jealousy) how your whole March was but one entire Triumph, and that all persons, of all Conditions, Ages, and Sexes, met you, either to unbosom themselves and tell their Miseries, and pray your Help; or, give you the Acclamations due to a Blood-less Victory; they now thought you too great and too good to live, and were preparing your hearse and Cypress, while you brought them the Olive-branch of Peace: First, to try you, they offered you an Oath, which I think no sober conscientious person will take, it being in effect but to bind up the Hand of Providence, and to set one's Face against that Power, which (for aught we know) may intend us for our good, or punishment, what we so much fear; and to either we ought quietly to submit. This not taking, they endeavoured, first to render you odious, that they might more easily destroy you, and send you unpitied to your grave and scorned, robbing you first of that which should have sweetly preserved your name to Posterity, your Honour: To effect this, they commanded you to go with your Army into the City, and there to Imprison their Members, Break down their Gates, portcullises, Chains and Posts, and whatsoever looked like a Fence for that freedom hath so long been theirs; what an angry and sad Face you saw the City wear for that action, you know: Nor would their Malice to your Fame have ended here, for you were to assist at the horrid murdering of some Citizens and Common-council Men, whom they intended to hang at their own doors, in terror to the rest; when this was done, you were to disarm them, and to level their Walls to the ground, and to have found in their ruins your own: For, when by these accursed actions they had fixed an Odium upon you, than were you to fall a sacrifice to their Ambition, whom nothing can satisfy but the Tyranny over three Nations at once, and from a Deliverer become a Victim: Your prudence wisely foresaw this, and finding how odious they endeavoured to make you, and how closely they had contrived your ruin, you put a stop to their horrid designs, and by countenancing the City in their Equitable Desires, have raised in all such an admiration, and for yourself so great a stock of glory, as you cannot, but by some strange act of Indiscretion, forfeit or lose; you cannot but take notice to what a strange height of Joy that good action raised every sober person, and if you wanted Inclinations in your own Soul to do us good, you might be lighted to them by those Fires which were kindled for your Triumph that Night, and would (had you gone on) in all probability, have proved your Funeral Pile, few days after. You have fairly began our Deliverance, leave it not here, for your Safety and our Good are so linked together and allied, that neither can fall singly: You have by an act of Honour and Justice exasperated a Party against you, whose Principles are damnable, whose Spirits are implacable; by the one they pretend and believe, by a strange kind of Saintship, a Title to all our Lives and Fortunes, and that they were by Grace born our Heirs; by the other they have in them so great a thirst after Revenge, like Italians, they kill with a smile; and however they may for Safety seem Friends, are never to be atoned; How hardly they forget and pardon Injuries, the late Northern Expedition will manifest; for when the Officers of Lambert's Army by an early defection and submission thought to preserve their places, though the first did their business without a blow struck, yet not one of forty was continued in his Command; and if they urge their Mercy to Lambert, 'tis not their Clemency but Necessity, hoping by his Interest among the fanatics, to balance, or countermand and check your Power: Nor is there any thing so Sacred that can bind them, they having violated all Covenants and Oaths, and it is to be believed, press others to do the like, that they may make others as hateful and abominable as themselves; in this imitating their Master the Devil, who is watchful and industrious for our damnation, for envy and company: Besides, my Lord, you have provoked them, by fixing upon them a Character in your Speech, which the whole Body of our Language cannot equal, and they can never forgive or forget, for it will live as long as the name of RUMP, that spawned them. Having thus deservedly made them your Enemies, it is too late to make them your Friends, nor can they expect it; and unless you will be so imprudent as to cast off the love and protection of all sober persons, and betake yourself to a villainous, accursed, hated, deformed Monster of Confusion, which yourself have condemned and branded with an eternal mark of Infamy, you cannot own or act with them, or for them: You gave them a fair time to perform your just Desires, which they have slighted, and forfeited your protection; if you stand by them any longer, you put your hand to your own destruction, to farther it; and your Delay, which is all they ask, is but the Basis of your ruin; you may see by their favourable censure of Lambert what they intend; and you know who were last Week in consultation, and what Party he was to head: Your Ignorance cannot, your Courage will not, Let not your Irresolution destroy you and the three Nations; on you depends their hopes, frustrate them not, lest you fall with them, and suffer not this Insulting dragon's tail of Tyranny to oppress us longer; you have a glorious opportunity put by Providence into your hands to make yourself Great and Safe, Beloved of Good men, and Terrible to the Bad, lose it not by Delaying; that (when your Name is read in the number of those Deliverers whom Fame and Truth have faithfully committed to Posterity) you may be remembered with Joy and Honour in after Generations: But, if on the contrary, your patient but dangerous expecting from these Tyrants a Settlement, make you lose the Glory of so brave an Action, you will assuredly fall with our Hopes, unpitied, accursed, and with your own, conclude the three Nations tragedy. Your Servant and honourer T. S. LONDON, Printed in the Year. 1659.