OBSERVATIONS ON THE LAST Dutch Wars, In the Years 1672, and 1673.  
WITH SOME REFLECTIONS UPON THE CITY and COUNTRY.  Deut. 23. 9 
When the Host goeth forth against thine Enemies, then keep thee from every wicked thing.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1679.   

OBSERVATIONS ON THE LAST Dutch Wars, etc.  
I It being my fortune, as well as other younger Brothers, to run the risk of the world, to live gentily; it was my chance to be in the last Dutch Wars, where through my own observation and the Sailor's complaint, I took notice of these three things: First, the general neglect of the Lords Day throughout the whole Fleet, we working upon the Sunday as much, if not more, than we do upon others, and that whilst we are in harbour; and all this is done under the Name of Expedition: And when we are at Sea, a Commander thinks himself sufficiently excused to God and the World, if he can find any trifling business to shift off his Chaplain from the duty of the day; if it be but the providing of a Dinner for two or three of his Brother Captains; and a Lieutenants Command for a Rope for the Boat, shall be sooner answered with Boatswain's call, than the Bell for prayers: And this is exactly contrary to the first Article of War, Anno decimo tertio Caroli Secundi Regis: That all Commanders, Captains, and Officers at Sea, shall cause the public Worship of Almighty God, according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, Established by Law, to be solemnly, orderly, and reverently performed in the respective Ships; and that Prayers and Preach by the respective Chaplains in holy orders of the respective Ships, be performed diligently; and that the Lords day be observed according to Law. He that was ever able to read his Bible, can tell that Joshua's Sword prevailed no longer than Moses held up his hands, and had it not been for Moses' Prayers, Joshua, for all his valour, had been defeated. But we like the Scribes, Pharisees, and Hypocrites, pay Tithes of Mint, anise, and Cummin, but omit the weightier matters of the Law; and think that Powder and Bullet will do sufficient Execution without the blessing of God; and that a Commander saying Bear in, and keep your Luff, shall as soon put a Fleet to flight, as Gideon discomfit an Host; but let us remember that it was the Sword of the Lord and Gideon: And we see that God in Deut. 20. assigneth an employment to the Priests, as well as to the Officers of the Camp: But they cry out what good do these Churchmen do? And as they are little regarded there, so are they not taken notice of when they come home; as if there were no respect or preferment deserved by venturing their Lives in the service of God and their King. This fault is not only to be found in his Majesty's Navy, but also to be deplored in the Country, the Lords Day being set apart only for some idle business, which we cannot afford ourselves time enough to do in the Week; or otherwise to run to hear a man that preach's twice a day, calls us Saints and the Children of God, but never instructs us what we must do for the attaining of these Titles, and this only amounts to spiritual pride; for they being once puffed up with being the Children of God, they never think of honouring their Fathers and Mothers according to that Law which God hath enacted. Such that pride themselves in the knack of Preaching, and neglect Catechising; make more Rebels than good Subjects: Two such Parsons I hear of not far off, who strive to outpreach one another; not, I guess, who should make the best Christians, and consequently the best Subjects; but who shall get the most popular Applause, the Country People being more delighted with a well nosed Tone, than Sense and Reason. This might easily be remedied, were those Acts put in execution, which are made for the observing of the Lords Day: But alas! most of our Justices understand nothing but to cry so ho to a brace of Greyhounds, and to speak well to a pack of Dogs; and as much Law as to take away a man's Gun, to make him pay his Fine for killing of a Hare or a Pheasant, and threaten to whip a Beggar to save an Alms; but in the more weighty points of the Law, would be baffled upon the Bench by every High-shooe; were it not for those worthy Gentlemen, who never made profession of the Law, but have made it their study, and those that have been bred to that noble Profession, and are in that honourable Commission: Such Peruked Novices rendering the name of a Justice as ridiculous, as a Fool doth that of a Clergyman. This day was very exactly observed by the French, and very much to our shame; and how unreasonable is it since God hath given us six for own labour, we don't, according to his command, allow him the seventh for his service?  
The second is that dreadful Profanation of the Lords Name, for every Sailer can ring a peal of Oaths as true as any of your London Huffs, to whom if your back be towards, when you hear him open, you can't distinguish him by his mouth from one of your Town Gallants, for he carries the shauntee behaviour in his Tongue, though not in his Hat and Knee: And this is exactly contrary to the second Article of War, Anno Decimo Tertio Caroli Secundi Regis: Every Person and Persons in his Majesty's pay, using unlawful and rash Oaths, Curse, Execrations, Drunkenness, Uncleanness, or other scandalous Actions in derogation of God's honour, and corruption of good manners, shall be punished by Fine, Imprisonment, or otherwise, as the Court Marshal shall think fit. This, as I have been told, was punished by the gallant Earl of Sandwich, with the loss of their victuals for that day; and they themselves, I have heard, in a Godly humour complain and say, For these two things we do not prosper; and that it was not so in Oliver's days: And we know that God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain. Yet though they look upon this and other Sins as Beams in their Brothers, they only esteem them as Motes in their own eyes; and most of them, like our empty Bullies, think not the other words (which God knows in respect of Oaths and Curses to be very few) to have any thing of Lustre without these foils; and many of them like some of our Gentlemen, are made up of nothing but Oaths and Execrations: so that if men were but aboard a Ship, they need not send for such a one to hear him swear, for there they may have their ears deafened with this hellish Thunder, which will give as smart and as brisk claps from their Jaws, as from the mouths of those formal Fops, who made it their study to let them off with a Grace. And if the Fine for it were appropriated to his Majesty's use, it would (until this vice was reformed) amount to much more than Chimney-money: Yet however if punished according to Law, our Corporations would quickly be provided of sufficient Stocks to employ their Poor in work; and if every Seaman did pay his Twelvepences, his Majesty might without any charge to himself and Subjects, relieve all the Slaves in Turkey. But this and the forementioned Law (with many others were most excellently well enacted, but never throughly executed.  
Thirdly, I never saw any real love betwixt the Commanders, they being distinguished by two Names, the Terpolian and the Gentile; the Terpolian envying the Gentile, and yet neither the Gentile or the Terpolian hearty loving one another: For let them caress one another never so kindly, yet as soon as they are parted, they will jeer and scoff at him, whom they have but a little before took about the Neck and kissed; a pretty Compliment which becomes the Sons of Cupid and the Daughters of Venus, and not the Sons of Mars. This makes me believe that they regard their own private, before the public Interest, and done't so diligently observe the Fight Instructions, of which Prince Rupert was so jealous, that in one Fight he commanded that one should stand upon the head, and another upon the Poop of every Ship, to observe the performance of him who was next a Head and next a Stern to him: And, as I have been told, Sir Edward Spragg had always his Prospective Glass at his Eye, to behold the behaviour of those that were in his Squadron. If there are any private grudges amongst them, methinks they might lay them aside, till they have ended the public quarrel; and not imitate those, whom Hudibras in the second Canto of his third Part, so ingeniously describes. 
Lay public Bills aside for private,  
And make 'em one another drive out;  
Divert the Great and Necessary  
With Trifles to Contest and Vary.   
I only mention this, for if I were Seaman enough to give any instances, I should not, for the reason which the Learned Hooker gives in his Book of Ecclesiastical Polity, pag. 1. He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers, because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of Regiment is subject; but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceed are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgement to consider; and because such as openly reprove supposed disorders of State, are taken for principal Friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry singular freedom of mind; under this fair and plausible colour, whatsoever they utter passeth for good and currant. That which wanteth in the weight of their Speech, is supplied by the aptness of men's minds to accept and believe it. So that if my Pen were able to reveal the least mishap in his Majesty's affairs, I should presently have the Tongues of our Coffee-Politicians come into our assistance, and make it a grand fault and a downright miscarriage. They, who whilst they are smoking their Pipes of Tobacco, can Rigg, Victual, and Man a Fleet, set to Sea, Fight the Dutch upon the Galloper and never run aground, beat them at Southwold Bay; and before they have whiffed out their Pipes, can return again with victory, without the loss of either Legs or Arms; yet after all the Fire and Smoak they have been in, dare not board their Coffee-dishes without much huffing and puffing, for fear of scalding their Chaps: These Turkey News mongers, who with their Pipes and Dishes look as learnedly, as the Mahometan in the Sign doth with these Ornaments, often tell for truth their own inventions. Thus they reported that the Duke of York was ashore at South-wold a Feasting, and the rest of the Captains a drinking, which was a damnable lie; for he was never ashore from the nineteenth of April, until the eighteenth of September; and, as my Captain told me, had given strict Command that no Sea Captain should go from his Ship; And I never heard that any were missing from their Ships in the time of Fight, unless it were some Land Officers and some Sea Lieutenants, who were sent ashore, to see their men fill their water, and to hasten them aboard again when they had done. And although this Engagement was fought over again at the Coffee Table, and the Dutch routed by those who only carry in their Noddles the models of Fights, and the valour of Soldiers in their Fancies; yet let me tell them, that it was fought with excellent valour and conduct by his Highness the Duke of York, who had the Prince and the Saint Michael disabled under him, and hoist his Standard aboard the Royal London. The Royal Katherine was taken, and after she had been in the Enemy's possession three hours, was retaken by her own Ships company: The Henry (after the loss of her Captain, the valiant Digby, who although he had lost his hand, did lose none of his heart; for it is no sooner dressed but he is again upon Deck to encourage his men, and falls by a small Shot) having lost most of her other Officers, and being disabled in her Masts and Rigging, fell into the hand of the Enemy; but is retaken by that modest and gallant Gentleman Captain Roger Strickland in the Plymouth, who for this service was deservedly Knighted; besides the taking of one man of War of theirs, with the sinking of divers others: And had not the next day proved thick and hazy, few Dutch Ships had went home to have told the News; for we having the wind of them, the Duke was resolved to have fought them Yard Arm and Yard Arm. The bloody Flag was put out twice, but it is no sooner out, but there came such thick mists, that we could not see the Dutch Fleet, notwithstanding we were almost within shot of it: But oh! we lost the Royal James: It is true we did, but I shall not now stay to answer you by demanding your Resolutions to some Questions, but expect to hear, since there is such need of your wit, valour, and conduct, that you have laid aside your women's weapons (I mean your impertinent and reviling Tongues) that you have broke your Pipes and Coffee dishes, and that all your scattered Forces are drawn up into a main body, and that you are marching into Scotland under the Command of one of your Great, but insignificant Fops; and when we shall hear that you are advanced within a mile of the Rebel's Camp, and are entrenched upon the top of some high hill within sight of them, we shall expect a Packet that your breath did prove more destructive than a Plague, and that your eyes, like the Basilisk's, did kill the Camp at a distance; for your valour consists only of a little prate, and your Politics of a premeditated discourse: For had your Actions been as great as your Talk, without doubt the French King had employed many Regiments of Coffeeteers in his service; but that he knew the Gentlemen at Arms would do more execution than you with your blustering blabs. From you Jacks of all Trades it is returned to our public spirited Country Gentlemen, who drink for and stand to their Country, and course and hunt, who swallow your News with as much eagerness as they do a Bumper to a Miss, and give you giddy Politicians as much veneration, as a wise man doth an Oracle of State; immediately setting to work to get your Letters memoriter, that they may be able to repeat them with as much wit as gravity, the next time they meet their Tenants over a Tub of Ale about some Town business, where they are sure to be admired and to have their Tenants Hats off with their Pots in their Hands, and all of them ready at the period to drink their Landlords good health, wishing all their Governors like their Worships; with which applause they are so much tickled, that to admire their wisdom they turn their Optics in upon it, and after they have took a severe view of their long reach, they think no Pilots so fit to bring the Ship of State into harbour as themselves; when alas! most of them are not able to manage their own Persons, much less work their own little Yachts as they should do. The wooden Shoe need not have been thrown into the Speaker's Chair, to have hindered his Majesty's proceed; for let our Country Gentlemen look home, and they will find in their own Lordships many poor Tenants, that have wasted their stocks upon their Grounds, and are forced to go barefoot and barelegged, being kept at the charge of their other Tenants, who though they may eat Leeks and Onions, yet seldom meat to the full; especially amongst those Landlords whose Country has given them good Estates, but France their grand breeding: Yet these poor men must and will open with their Landlords, and run full cry against great Taxes, though they be never so much for the good and benefit of the whole Nation, never considering at our Lady and Michaelmas days, how deaf they are to their just desires for some abatement of their wont Rents, or the giving them a small stick for their help of repairs; being never willing to ease them but out of the stock of State. As they employ their small Rhetoric to diminish Taxes, so on the other side they do it to raise their Rents; and if any Person stand up for his Religion and Property (the things so much sought after) he shall presently be discharged, and must march off at our Lady day, unless by foregoing his right, he makes a Composition with his Landlord. Nay, if a Freeholder doth stand up for his Property against the great man of the Town, he shall be threatened with ruin, and not him alone but a whole Corporation if they displease him: And how shall this be brought to pass? why, by giving themselves and their Servants that great self-denial of not taking their wont swills of its only Manufacture called Ale. Thus most Country Gentlemen in their Stations imitate the French, and if their Tenants Daughters are handsome, always executing the Law of Ewen the Scotch King, and only revile our merciful Sovereign, because they cannot be Nero's to the whole Nation. But this is not all, for after every Fight you shall have your Country Villages filled with a parcel of idle Fellows, who pretend to be either Seamen or Soldiers, complaining that they are forced to run away for want of Victuals, how they are cheated of their Pay, and of the ill Conduct of their Commanders; crying out their Country is betrayed: Such Rascals Reports being as Authentic with the Vulgar, as an Account from the Admiral is to his Majesty after a Council of War, for the particulars of the Engagement; and are as much crowded for their News, as a Ballad Singer in the Market is for his Ditty. These incorrigible Rogues, if taken up and sent to his Majesty's Plantations, would not only ease, but also might prove very serviceable to their King and Country howsoever, if taken and sent to the House of Correction according to Law. And thus far I shall vindicate his Majesty's Affairs by experience, that no man wanted his Victuals aboard, unless it were for a fault, and if they were put to short Allowance (which is very sufficient to maintain any reasonable man) they had their pinchgut money paid them as soon as they came into harbour, and no man went without his pay, unless he was made run by the Clerk of the Cheeque. But at parting, let me repeat to you Sir Robert Cotton's Preface to his twenty four Arguments concerning Popish Practices: I am not ignorant (saith he) that this latter Age hath brought forth a swarm of busy heads, which measure the great mysteries of State by the rule of their self conceited wisdoms, but if they would consider that the Commonwealth, (though I think the Kingdom the better name) Governed by grave Counsellors, is like unto a Ship directed by a skilful Pilot, to whom the necessities of Occasions and grounds of Reason, why he steereth to this or that part of the Compass are better known than to those that stand aloof off, they would perhaps be more sparing, if not more wary in their Resolutions. Indeed I confess, that our mouths ought always to be open against Popery, but I would not have their Diameters exceed the Ring of Charity; for had not good Language and good Carriage been a point of Religion as well as of Civility, the Apostle had not commanded his Corinthians (Ep. 1. Cap. 10. v. 32.) to give no Offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of God. But since we have the Ship of Rome to the Leeward of us, and are pouring in all our Broadsides upon her, so that she must needs sink, unless she prove more impenetrable than she hath done infallible; let us keep our Stern chase out against another Enemy, who now claps on all the Sail he can, and intends to get up with the Church of England, and in this Engagement weather her, and once more make her strike sail to him: I mean Jack Presbyter, whose hot headed Zeal hath been more Injurious to the Church of England, than the Romish Flames; for they only lighted an Army of her Martyrs to heaven, but this hath raised an Host of fanatics perpetually to torment her; and though they pretend to be men of tender Consciences, yet when they had took her, they proved more hard hearted than the most inveterate Romanists, and outed more men of their Live in the space of three years, (says Doctor Heylin in his History of them, lib. 13. pag. 459. paragr. 30.) than were deprived by the Papists in the Reign of Queen Mary: And for their inhuman cruelties they did not come far behind them, as you may see in Doctor Heylin's Bill of Mortality of the Clergy of London, lib. 13. pag. 455. paragr. 29. For they did not only Imprison, Plunder, and put to Flight; but exposed, in Ships, their Persons to the mercy of a Raging Sea, their Wives and Children they turned out of doors to gnawing Hunger and pinching Poverty; whilst these Pharisees, with long Prayers and Vultures Stomaches, devour their Estates: And when with their seditious whinings, they had modelled our beauteous Church according to their Schismatical Humour, she appeared a greater Monster than Apelles' Masterpiece. But moderate and temperate men who were good Subjects, and afterwards some of them Martyrs, drew this; the other being the product only of hot-brained Jack's tumultuous and seditious Fancy. Our Church hath so often routed the Pope's Legions, that his Combatants have thrown away their Argumentative Arms, and have took up Sword, Fire, and Pistol, to reduce us into the subjection, not only of the Bishop, but Monarch of Rome: So when the Presbyterians cannot outdo us by dint of Argument, they imitate the furious Goddess in the Poet. Flectere si nequeo superas, Acheronta movebo.  
If Heaven won't defend their unjust cause, they are sure Hell will, and presently they bring in the Devil for their Disputant; wherefore I shall not venture to frame a Glass that may describe these Conjurers, lest, with the famous Sherlock, I should have a Dialogue with Satan. Their Glasses now are all set about the Room, let them look into Fabian Philip's his Veritas inconcussa, and there they may behold themselves, setting the best of Kings for a mark to my Lord of Essex's Canon: Let them look into the History of Independency, and there they may see themselves not only the greatest Rogues, but also the merest Fools in Nature: Let them behold themselves in Bishop Bramhal, and if a Presbyterian and a Papist can there distinguish Countenances, I don't know my own face from another's. Let them look upon themselves in Heylin's History of them, and there they will appear to be the only Incendiaries of the World; And if ever they would be accounted Loyal Subjects, they must clap on a thicker Mask than that which Mr. Thomas of Christ-Church took off; for King-killing is a Principle of the Presbyterians as well as of the Jesuit, which they desperately maintained and throughly executed: For when King Charles the First had parted with those Regal Jewels to them, that if they had suffered him to have lived, he would only have been Magni Nominis umbra, nothing would quench their fiery Zeal, and satisfy their unsatiable desires, but his innocent blood; they being resolved to murder him by the Sword of the Law, or the Law of the Sword. Wherefore Mr. Christopher Love declares their minds, in his Preachment at Uxbridge Treaty, pag. 32. 'Twas the Lord (saith he) that troubled Achan, because that he troubled Israel: Oh that in this our State-Physicians (he meant Cutthroats sure) would resemble God, to cut off those from the Land who have distempered it: Melius est ut pereat unus quam unitas, immedicabile vulnus ense recidendum est; and that they should not forget this passage, nor misconstrue his Latin, pag. 39 He thus puts them in mind, and farther explains himself: Men (saith that Presbyterian) who lie under the guilt of much innocent Blood, are not meet Persons to be at peace with, till all the guilt of Blood be expiated, and avenged, either by the Sword of the Law, or by the Law of the Sword. Thus they proved more barbarous than the Inhabitants of Mesech, and those that dwelled in the Tents of Kedar: For when David desired to be at peace with these his Enemies, they only made ready for Battle; but when our blessed King, whom they had deprived of his Power and Strength, did labour for peace, and spoke to them thereof that were his Subjects, and aught in all Allegiance to have obeyed him; they declared for his Murder, and if their young and unentred Lawyers will not condemn him to the Block, according to their King-killing Principles, they are sure their well flushed Redcoats, who assassinated him in Effigy at Winchester Cathedral, would murder him in Person when they had brought him back to the House of Parliament; and for this execrable service of theirs, they might without the Pope have received Absolution from Stephen Marshal, as well as for their Oaths. Thus the Presbyterians cry down the Pope and preach up the Jesuit: Those that cannot remember, yet if they can read must needs know, how Jack Presbyter run about with his Hue and Cry against Popery and evil Counsellors, and that his only design of raising an Army, was to extirpate the one (for whose entrance he hath made a wide gap) and to take his Majesty from his pernicious (as they pretended) Council, and to make him an absolute Prince: But they no sooner got him into their Clutches, but according to their Traitorous distinction, they killed him in his politic Capacity, and only gave a terrible groan (I mean one of their sighs) because they did not murder Charles Stuart, and that that cursed and desperate blow was not celebrated by one of their extemporary Prayers: And though they may endeavour to make the World believe that they made prayers for the King, yet we never heard of any of their Petitions, until that Jackcall Cornet Joice had rob them of their prey, and brought it to the Lion Cromwell, and when they saw him in his paws and ready to be devoured of him, they might say to God as the taunting and not understanding Jews did one to another, when our Saviour cried out in his Agony, Eli, Eli, lamasabacthani; they might say, let us see whether God will save him: For as to his Circumstances, he was in the same capacity as our Saviour, and required as great a miracle to redeem him from the Block, as there must have been to have took our Saviour from the Cross; for it was impossible for his Majesty to have escaped, unless that God had impowered the Bishop that was upon the Scaffold with him (like Moses and Aaron) by the throwing up of Ashes towards Heaven, to have struck them with Boils, so that they might not have been able to have stood before him; or that he had enabled one of his Captains (like Gideon) with three hundred men to have discomfited this Host of Midianites, or that his words (like our Saviour's) should have driven them backwards and made them to have fallen to the ground, when he told them he was their King; or that at his prayer God would have sent him more than twelve Legions of Angels: No, Curse ye Meroz, curse ye bitterly the Inhabitants thereof, (that is all good Subjects who will fight for, and will not fight against their King) Judg. 5.23. was the excellent Doctrine at Edghill, Newberry, and Naseby Fights. Thus Presbyterians mock God, and never think of Death but talk of Heaven; and thus they blackened the whitest of Kings, and made the best of Subject's vassals: And now the Pope is on foot again, but whilst they run him hard, they bark damnably against the King and his Council, and I believe would by't too if they durst; intending to snatch up the Church of England in the Ring. They scorn to curse (which according to the Original is disrespect) the King in their thoughts, or that the bird of the Air should tell the matter; No, these Rabshekahs call God, Men, and Angels to witness, and show the thoughts of their hearts by telling of lies, and talking scandalously of him in Coffeehouses and the open Streets, never opening their Fanatical Chaps but pretending they reveal as great secrets of him, as those barbarous wretches did of his Father, who printed his Letters: Nothing now will serve their turns but concessions from his Majesty, but if the King part with his Prerogative, then farewell property and hang up Magna Charta; for his Subjects shall no more be tried per probos et legales homines, but run down by a pack of bloodhounds, who will pray upon our Estates as soon as John Catch doth cry dead, dead, hath paunched and stripped their Bodies: Let us therefore that are right-bred Englishmen, who don't cut out our Religion by the Romish pattern or after the Geneva mode, nor our manners after the French fashion; I say let us not be choosed again by a humoursom and a rapacious faction, of our King, Magna Charta, and all those Privileges that belong to all true Englishmen and good Subjects; and once more become Slaves and Vassals to this Tyrannous Kingdom of Saints, who cry out Religion and Liberty, but intent to clap on Shackles upon our Hands, Tongues, and Consciences; so that if we don't submit to what they please to call the Law and Reason of the Land, and to what their Saintships shall term Religion; the Dungeon or the Gallows shall be Umpire and decide the case. I am certain there is none of us too old, though many of us may be too young, to remember how it was High Treason to pass a Jest upon Oliver's Nose: How we were enslaved by a Military, Arbitrary, and Oligarchical Government, who contrary to our known Laws oppressed us with illegal Taxes, and whilst with much Travel we laboured for a Livelihood under them, how a parcel of Brewers, Draymen, and Cobblers revealed it upon the sweat of our Brows. No, let them with their demure looks and canting tone cheat their zealous Sisters of their Bodkins and Thimbles, whilst we that are good Christians and Royal Subjects, follow the wisest of King's advice, Prov. 24.21, 22. Fear God and the King, and meddle not with those that are given to change: For their Calamity shall rise suddenly, and who knoweth the Ruin of them both?  
FINIS.