The Fools of Fate: OR, The unravelling of the PARLIAMENT and ARMY.  

Fate (for our crimes) permitted us  
To grumble 'gainst each thing,  
Next for to be tumultuous,  
And fight against our King.   

He, down to have those bore our ears,  
We our Reformers made  
To be sole Authors of our fears,  
And to make War a Trade.   

They fearing we have found their sly  
And villainous projction,  
Have raised an Army, and will try  
To force us yield subjection.   

Their Army are the people's hate,  
Both they will now pull down,  
And now behold the Fools of Fate  
Fall dead by Charles his Crown.   
Printed in the Year. 1648.   

The Fools of Fate, or the unravelling of the Parliament and Army.  
Senator's, Citizens and Soldiers have been ever noted as of different powers, so of different tempers, each party never imagining a parity for the Senator to measure out the Laws by the City-yard, the Citizen to pin his faith upon the Senator's sleeve, or the Soldier to fight in a Gown with the City-Charter in his hand, is as monstrous as the Chaos of Presbytery, or a King on the stool of repentance.  

A sweet Conjunction sure, an Omen good,  
When Senate, City, Army join in blood,  
While Martin, Warner, Cromwell do commix  
To ruin King and Kingdom by their tricks:  
While that these sons of mischief, though they hate  
Each other, can meet and procreate  
New brats of mischief, and their Bastard Heirs  
Must be maintained by the Kingdom's fears;  
Fidessa and Speranze all the graces  
Do with Astrea, fly to heavenly places:  
Bellona vile Duessa, hell and night  
Do bring their monstrous birth to the world's light.   
Yet how darest thou thou saucy Muse, to question the acts of those mechanic Princes? Knowest thou not that Martin may belch in thy face, (the steam of his hot breath being of a more suffocating efficacy to men, than the lake Avernus to birds) and blast thee with Naaman's Leprosy? Fearest thou not that Warners Worship, (that excellent City-Patriot, whose innocency is such that he scarce discerns his right hand from his left, or a Geneva Bible from the Holy Writ) the true and undoubted Mayor of London, Stilo novo, will not summon thee before his Nonsenseship, and having expostulated with thee a long time in the Barbarian tongue, send a Tipstaffe with thee to Tullianum? may not Cromwell (if his Grace be yet mortal) command his Journeumen at Westminster to call thee before them, and to pass their doom upon thee, as an opposer of the Saints, and an abuser of his Nose? Yes, yes, it is worth thy fear, were it not that thou art now nonresident, sometimes at Westminster to the terror of the Junto, sometimes at Guildhall, and then M. Warner starts, as if he saw the glimpse of his Majesty's sword, sometimes at the Court of Guard, before Colchester, and then Tom halts from before thee, as if the pocky humour in his toe had forsaken him: the truth is, thou art prying every where, constant no where, etc.  

And 'tis but requisite when Rebels gape,  
When Lewis that fell wolf, Leechman that Ape,  
And Hunscot that same Otter hunt about,  
And with a full cry trace the royal Rout.   
But I stand too long at the gate, now I will enter the enchanted Castle, and skirmish a while with Devils and Centaurs, i. e. with the Junto and Army; I am in the round House of Yea and noah's, even in the House of Commons, it is fit therefore I prostrate myself on my marrowbones, & supplicate their high & mightinesses thus:  

All hail most high and mighty Sots,  
Who England do divide by lots,  
To whom all Rebels ever were,  
Were puny rogues, whose wit or fear  
Deterred them from your monstrous acts,  
And ploughing hell with horrid facts.  
Inhuman Vipers hatched to be  
The Midwives of our misery,  
Where is your King? see how a red  
Died deep doth o'er their faces spread:  
Is there Law, Gospel, is there sense  
'Mongst Mortals? or hath impudence  
Surprised the Organs of the mind?  
It hath, as truth by you we find;  
Our eyes of Treason we accuse,  
Because they lead us to peruse  
Your damned Votes, such Legends are  
Not in Baronius Ocular:  
Shall Charles be mewed up in a cage,  
While you enjoy the golden Age?  
He sent to the extremest bounds,  
Where night Hyperions son confounds,  
Sitting the pole so fare beneath,  
He scarcely hears the winds that breath,  
While you (brave Jovialists) command  
Like Gods of clay, by Sea and Land,  
Resign, resign, ere it be too late,  
Proceed not for to tempt your Fate:  
Tom cannot save you, he is lame,  
Nois gone to Hell, from whence you came:  
Let not your lying Prophets be  
The oracles of destiny,  
In your esteem, till sent by us  
Unto profoundest Tartarus.  
Lilies a Liar, each man sees  
By his own Ephemerideses:  
And Booker, hath mistake the stars,  
While he proposed all peace, no wars:  
Though you perhaps, like Fools of Fate,  
A while yet longer may be great,  
Yet know your ruin is decreed  
By heaven and men; then look to bleed.   
Look for Plato's year, or for Mahomet's Elysium say they, as soon as to behold our downfall; delude yourselves with vain hopes to the last minute; it will be the more ample Justice & complete revenge: in the mean time, 'twere fit that the people were throughly persuaded of your wickedness, & that they no longer worshipped the God of Heaven & of Eckron at once, nor like Bugesse the counterfeit Doctor of Paul's, halt between two opinions, one while inveigh against Sectaries, another advance the gifts of private Saints, & Button-makers, you have assumed the impudence to name yourselves a Parliament; are you so— look how Weaver gnasheth his teeth at me, (the Rogue sure hath got an ague in his Jaws) see how Scot bends his rough front (which to me seemeth some barren rock inhabited by Serpents, and over grown with withered moss) sirrah, all thy invectives against his Majesty will not avail; the King must live to behold thy pernicious soul dismissed by torture, the time will come (when thou that hast often urged to thy fellow Ravilliacks, that his Majesty ought to be brought to legal trial for his life, and to be hanged) shalt be hanged up alive in chains & not die till thou beholdest the fowls of the air to fetch away thy limbs by parcels. Do you stare Devils, do you stare? I say, you that have the impudence to name yourselves a Parliament, and your Pamphleteers roar out the name of Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, with such a bellowing noise, that the whole Land echoes again, while in the mean time, yourselves laugh at the fools that divulge, and all those that are so mad to believe it, yourselves well knowing that you are no more a Parliament, than I am a Round-head, that Pembroke is knowing or Say loyal; you well know, that you are but a part of a part, a handful of cunning Conspirators, a Parliament being an entire Body, consisting of his Majesty, the Lords spiritual and temporal, to a head, and a Commoner for every particular Shire, not a parcel of Peers some twelve in number, that show in their Chairs when their House is fullest, like so many scabbey sheep upon a vast mountain: you are a mere Conventicle of Regicides, your House, is that Augaean Stable which must be purged by that Hercules, whose hands are yet tied behind him, King Charles. I will show you how and in what sense you are a Parliament.  

If to be damned, Dissemblers to pretend  
To act a good, yet no such thing intent,  
If to be sacrilegious Thiefs, to swear,  
To covenant with hell Sans wit or fear;  
For to rebel against your King, to plot  
How to draw in the soon deluded Scot  
Jointly for to engage, and so to hell  
Send two Nations at once; if lies to tell,  
And buzz into the credulous people's ears,  
So to stir up their stomaches with their fears;  
If to clap up your King a prisoner,  
And so alive his person to inter;  
Or if to use all ways to take his life,  
Banish his children and his loyal wife:  
If to o'erthrow and quite root out all Law,  
To cherish vice, and virtue over-awe:  
If to permit all Errors for to swarm  
Unto the Kingdoms, most the Churchees harm;  
If to pursue and prosecute with spite,  
All those who of your evil acts do write;  
If to be perjured persons, to contemn,  
And trample on the Royal Diadem,  
If for to act against all sense and reason,  
The deepest mischief, and the highest treason:  
If to defraud a Nation of their goods,  
And on the ground, like water spill their bloods,  
If to be cursed on all the world may make ye  
A Parliament, be so; the Devil stake ye.   
But I pray tell me, are you resolved now at last to treat with his Majesty? dare you look him in the face whom you have so horribly abused, and whose Royal Righteous soul you have so inhumanely vexed, that had not God, whose Vicegerent he is (and whom the world may see he respects as the apple of his eye) preserved him beyond humane expectation, you by this time might have triumph in his fall, and this poor Nation have been for ever lost by his death; Alas we all know that this is but your old trick to deceive the People, you dare aswell be tried by the known Laws for all your forepast actions, as admit of a Personal Treaty with his Majesty; the one brings on t'other as sure as Death; ti's good policy I confess now that the vulgar are so mad against you, and have declared that they will have their King out of prison with honour, or pull you out of your house with horror, to stop their mouths with sugar-plums if they will prove of that babelike temper, as to be led by the nose with such a spinner's thread, and fooled so egregiously after all their bustling? You would feign stave off the loyal citizens, with this reed, till Skippon hath listed a sufficient number of horses, that may if need be fall upon those that lately manifested their desires for a Treaty, or shall dare to do it hereafter, to the plundering of their lives and persons, or till Colchester shall be taken in.  

But all these cursed devices must not do,  
It is decreed, and you will find it true;  
That Colchesters' brave lads will neyer yield:  
That the Scots Army having ta'en the Field,  
Mixed with fierce Langdales' force, Tom must withdraw  
And post to Lambert for to help the Daw:  
Meantime with those in Colchester will side  
All those in London, who abhor your pride:  
Then down, down, down, down, the hill,  
Than you that have loved blood shall quaff your fill:   
And if your Army moulder away in the North as they are like suddenly to do if they dare to engage, since the Scots and English 〈◊〉 there now joined together make up no less than four 〈…〉 thousand a ●e men, who have a cause able to make 〈…〉 valiant, and to p●t a spirit into the most pusillanimous Therfites, that Army who nave all this while backed you in all your ungodly and wretched designs, will then smart for all their pernicious practices, their plunders' massacres and outrages, such as no history can parallel, or any old Romance produce the like, and if the old Saints be once totally suppressed where will your high and mightiness make up such another Army of plunderers, your nurseries will so much respect their own safety, as not to hazard their persons for a decaying cause, the citizens now have found their error, and resolve to keep the little money they have left, since the public faith is like shortly to take its progress with yourselves into some foreign climate, you have a taste of their intentions and resolutions, by their late petitioning, for a speedy Personal Treaty.  

Then when your Rakeshames of the Army faise,  
And your sworn enemies each where prevail.  
Whenas the Scots and English shall make war  
And force their way even to Colchester:  
When London, Westminster, shall both unite  
Against their Independent foes to fight,  
Whenas Prince Charles shall land, King Charles be free,  
Then woe unto you for your Treachery.   
Thus you Fools of Fate, for all your big hopes built upon such slender grounds (that no man possessed of sense, but would count himself capable of Bedlam College, if he credited them) you cannot avoid your dire and most inevitable Destiny; your stalking Champion Skippon is looked upon by the citizens even with as gracious an eye as Fairfax was when he brought the plunderers into Southwark; they will not permit him to list forces.  

Then know you cannot scape, as you can hope,  
For there stands Derrick, and there lies the rope.   
FINIS