Some of Mr HOWELS MINOR WORKS, Reflecting upon the TIMES: Upon Emergent Occasions.  
 woodcut of English rose  
Printed in the Year, 1654.   

THE INSTRVMENTS OF A KING: OR, A SHORT discourse OF 

The SWORD.  
The sceptre.  
The crown.    

Satis habet Rex ad poenam,  
Quod Deum expectet Ultorem.   

'tis punishment enough for th' King,  
That God will Him to judgement bring.   
 royal arms of England, circa 1648  
LONDON. Printed in the year, 1648.   

The Author's Apology▪  
I Am no Lawyer otherwise then what nature hath made me, so every man, as he is born the child of Reason, is a Lawyer, and a logician also who was the first kind of Lawyer: This discursive faculty of Reason comes with us into the world accompanied with certain general notions and principles to distinguish Right from Wrong, and falsehood from Truth: But touching this following Discourse, because it relates something to Law, the author would not have adventured to have exposed it to the world, if, besides those common innate notions of Reason, and some private Notes of his own, he had not informed& ascertained his judgement by conference with some professed Lawyers, and those the Eminentest in the Land, touching the truth of what it Treats of; therefore he dares humbly aver that it contains nothing but what is consonant to the fundamental and fixed Constitutions, to the known clear laws of this kingdom.  
J. 8●.   

THE INSTRUMENTS OF A KING.  
IN a Successi●● 〈…〉 ●●ngdome, as ENGLAND is known and acknowledged to be by all Parties now in opposition, There are 3 things which are inalienable from the Person of the KING: they are, 

1. The crown.  
2. The sceptre.  
3. The Sword.    
The one, He is to carry on His Head, the other in His Hand, and the third at His Side; and they may be termed all three the ensigns or peculiar instruments of a KING: by the first, He reigns, by the second He makes laws, by the third He maintains them: and the two first are but babbles without the last.  
1. Touching the crown or royal Diadem of England, there is none, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Protestant, or others now in action, but confess that it descends by a right hereditary Line,( though through divers razes, and some of them conquerors) upon the Head of CHARLES the first now Regnant: 'tis His own by inherent birthright and nature, by Gods law, and the Law of the Land, and these Parliamentmen at their first sitting did agnize subjection unto Him accordingly, and recognise Him for their sovereign liege Lord: Nay, the Roman catholic denies not this, for though there were Bulls sent to dispense with the English Subjects for their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, yet the Pope did this against Her as he too● 〈◇〉 for a heretic, not an Usur 〈…〉 he knew 〈◇〉 enough that She had been 〈…〉 timate by the Act of 〈…〉 Parliament.  
〈…〉 Crown of England is adorned and 〈◇〉 with many faire Flowers, which are called, royal Prerogatives; and they are of such a transcendent nature, that they are unforfeitable, individual, and untransferable to any other: The KING can only summon and dissolve Parliaments: The KING can onely Pardon( for when He is crwoned, He is sworn to rule in mercy as well as in justice:) The KING can onely coin Money, and enhance or decry the value of it: The power of electing Officers of State, of Justices of Peace, and assize is in the KING; He can only grant sovereign Commissions: The KING can only wage War, and make Out-landish Leagues: The KING may make all the Courts of justice ambulatory with His Person, as they were used of old; 'tis true, the Court of Common Pleas must be sedentary in some certain place for such a time; but that expired, 'tis removable at His pleasure: The KING can only employ ambassadors and Treat with foreign States, &c. These, with other royal Prerogatives which I shall touch hereafter, are those rare and wholesome flowers wherewith the crown of England is embellished, nor can they stick any where else but in the crown, and all confess the crown is as much the KING'S, as any private man's Cap is his own.  
The second regal Instrument is the sceptre, which may be called an inseparable companion, or a necessary appendix to the crown; this invests the KING with the sole Authority of making laws, for before His confirmation all results and determinations of Parliament are but Bills or {αβγδ}, they are but abortive things, and mere Embryos; nay, they have no life at all in them till the KING puts breath and vigour into them: and the ancient custom was for the KING to touch them with His sceptre, then they are laws, and have a virtue in them to impose an obligation of universal obedience upon all sorts of people, It being an undeniable maxim, That nothing can be generally binding without the King's royal assent, nor doth the Law of England take notice of any thing without it: This being done, they are ever after styled the King's laws, and the Judges are said to deliver the King's judgments, which agrees with the holy Text, The King by judgement shall stablish the Land: nay, the Law presumes the King to be always the sole Judge Paramount, and Lord chief Justice of England, for he whom He pleaseth to deputy for His chiefest Justice, is but styled Lord chief Justice of the King's Bench, not Lord chief Justice of England, which title is peculiar to the KING Himself, and observable it is, that whereas He grants Commissions and Patents to the Lord chancellor( who is no other then Keeper of His Conscience) and to all other Judges, He names the Chief Justice of His own Bench by a short Writ only containing two or three lines: Now, though the King be liable to the Law, and is contented to be within their verge, because they are chiefly His own productions, yet He is still their Protector, Moderator, and sovereign, which attributes are incommunicable to any other conjunctly or separately.  
Thus the KING with His sceptre, and by the mature advice of His two Houses of Parl. which are His highest council& Court, hath the sole power of making Laws; other Courts of judicature do but expound them and distribute them by His appointment, they have but Juris dati dictionem or declarationem, and herein, I mean for the Exposition of the laws the twelve Judges are to be believed before the whole Kingdom besides. They are as the Areopagites in Athens, the chief Presidents in France and spain in an extraordinary Junta, as the Cape-Syndiques in the Rota's of Rome, and the republic of Venice whose judgments in point of interpreting laws are incontroulable, and preferred before the opinion of the whole Senate whence they received their being; and who hath still power to repeal them, though not to expound them. In France they have a Law-maxime, Arrest donné en rob rouge est irrevocable, which is, a Scarlet Sentence is irrevocable, meaning when all the Judges are met in their Robes, and the Client against whom the Cause goes, may chafe and chomp upon the bit, and say what he will for the space of 24 hours against his Judges, but if ever after he traduces them, he is punishable: It is no otherwise here where every ignorant peevish Client, every puny Barister, specially if he become a Member of the House will be ready to arraign and vie knowledge with all the reverend Judges in the Land, whose judgement in points of Law should be only tripodicall and sterling: so that he may be truly called a just King, and to rule according to Law, who rules according to the opinion of his Judges; therfore, under favour, I do not see how his majesty for his part could be called injust when he levied the shipmoney, consideing he had the judges for it.  
I now take the Sword in hand, which is the third Instrument of a King,( and which this short discourse chiefly points at) it is as well as the two first, incommunicable and inalienable from his Person; nothing concerns his honor more both at home and abroad; the Crown and the sceptre are but unwieldy and impotent naked indefensible things without it. There's none so simplo as to think there's meant hereby an ordinary single sword, such as every one carrieth by his side, or some imaginary thing or chimera of a sword; No, 'tis the polemical public sword of the whole Kingdom, 'tis an aggregative compound sword, and 'tis moulded of bell-metall; for 'tis made up of all the ammunition and arms small and great, of all the military strengths both by Land and Sea, of all the Forts, Castles and tenable places within and round about the whole Ile: The Kings of England have had this sword by virtue of their royal signory from all times, the Laws have girded it to their sides, they have employed it for repelling all foreign force, for revenging all foreign wrongs or affronts, for quelling all intestine tumults, and for protecting the weal of the whole body politic at home: The people were never capable of this sword, the fundamental constitutions of this Kingdom deny it them; 'tis all one to put the sword in a mad mans hand, as in the peeples; or for them to have a disposing power in whose hands it shall be. Such was the case once of the French sword, in that notorious insurrection called to this day La Jaqueris de Beauvoisin, when the peasants and Mechanics had a design to wrest it out of the Kings hand, and to depress all the Peers& Gentry of the Kingdom;& the business had gone very far, had not the prelates stuck close to the Nobility; But afterwards poor harebrained things they desire the King upon bended knees to take it again; Such popular puffs have blown often in Poland, Naples and other places, where while they sought and fought for liberty by retrenching the regal power, they fooled themselves into a slavery unawares, and found the rule right, that excess of freedom turns to thraldom, and ushers in all confusions. If one should go back to the nonage of the world, when Governers and Rulers began first, one will find the people desired to live under Kings for their own advantage, that they might be restrained from wild exorbitant liberty, and kept in unity; Now unity is as requisite for the foreseeing of all natural things, as entity is for their being, and 'tis a received maxim in policy, that nothing pres●●ves Unity more exactly then royal Government: besides 'tis known to be the noblest sort of sway; In so much that by the Law of Nations, if Subjects of equal degrees, and under differing Princes should meet, the Subjects of a King should take predency of those under any republic, and those of a successif Kingdom, of those that are under an Electif.  
But to take up the Sword again. I say that the Sword of public power& authority is fit only to hang at the Kings side,& so indeed should the great Seal hang only at his girdle, because 'tis the Key of the Kingdom: which makes me think of what I red of charlemagne, how he had the imperial Seal embossed always upon the pommell of his sword, and his reason was, that he was ready to maintain whatsoever he signed, and sealed.  
The Civilians, who are not in all points so great friends to Monarchy as the Common Law of England is, say, there are six Iura Regalia, six regal Rights, viz. 1. Potestas Iudicatoria, 2. Potestas vitae& necis, 3. Armamenta, 4. Bona adespota, 5. Census, 6. Monetarum valor: to wit, Power of Judicature, power of life and death, all kind of arming, masterless goods, Sessements, and the value of money.  
Among these Regalias, we find that Arming, which in effect is nought else but the Kings Sword, is among the chiefest; and 'tis as proper and peculiar to his person, as either Crown or sceptre. By these two he draws a loose voluntary love and opinion onely from his Subjects, but by the Sword he draws reverence and awe, which are the chiefest ingredients of allegiance, it being a maxim, That the best mixture of government is made of fear and love. With this sword he confers honor, he dubbs Knights, he creates magistrates, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Lord Mayor of London with all other Corporations have their swords from him, and when he entereth any place corporat, we know the first thing that is presented him is the Sword: With this Sword he shields and preserves all his people that every one may sit quietly under his own Vine, sleep securely in his own House, and enjoy sweetly the fruits of his labours.  
Nor doth the point of this sword reach only to every corner of his own dominions, but it extends beyond the seas to gard his Subjects from oppression, and denial of justice, as well as to vindicate the public wrongs, make good the interests of his Crown, and to assist his confederates; This is the sword that Edward the third tied the Flower deluces unto( which stick still unto it,) when having sent to France to demand that Crown by maternal right, the counsel there sent him word that the Crown of France was not tied to a distaff, to which scoffing answer he replied that then he would tie it to his sword, and he was as good as his word. Nor is this public sword concredited or entrusted by the people in a fiduciary conditional way to the King, but it is properly and peculiarly belonging unto him, as an inseparable concomitant, perpetual Usher and attendant to his crown. The King, we know, useth to maintain all garrisons upon his own charge, not the peeples; he fortifies upon his own charge, not the peeples: And though I will not aver, that the King may impress any of his Subjects, unless it be upon an actual invasion by Sea, or a sudden irruption into his Kingdom by Land, as the Scots have often don, yet at any time the King may raise Volunteers, and those who have received his money, the Law makes it felony, if they forsake his service.  
Thus we see there's nothing that conduceth more to the glory, and indeed the very essence of a King then the Sword, which is the arms and military strength of his kingdom; wherefore under favour, there cannot be a greater point of dishonour to a King then to be disarmed, then to have his Sword taken from him, or disposed of and entrusted to any but those whom he shall appoint; for as à minori ad majus. the Argument often holds, if a private Gentleman chance to be disarmed upon a quarrel, 'tis held the utmost of disgraces, much greater and more public is the dishonour that falls upon a King, if after some traverses of difference 'twixt him and his Subjects, they should offer to disarm him, or demand his sword of him: when the Eagle partend with his talons, and the Lion with his teeth and ongles, the Apolog tells us how contemptible afterwards the one grew to be among Birds, the other among Beasts. For a King to part with the Sword politic is to render himself such a ridiculous King, as that log of wood was which Jupiter let down among the frogs for their King at the importunity of their croaking; 'tis to make him a King of clouts, or as the Spaniard hath it, Rey de Havas, a Bean-King, such as we use to choose in sport at Twelf-night.  
But my hopes are, that the two present Houses of Parlement( for now they may be called so, because they begin to parley with their King,) willbe more tender of the honor of their sovereign Liege Lord, which, together with all his Rights and Dignities, by several solemn Oaths, and by their own binding instruments of Protestation and Covenant,( not yet revoked) they are sworn to maintain, and that they will demand nothing of him which may savour of Aspertè or force, but what may hold water hereafter: But now, touching the Militia or Sword of the Kingdom, I think, under favour, the King cannot transfer it to any other; for that were to desert the protection of his people, which is point-blank against his Coronation Oath and his Office: What foreign Prince or State will sand either Ambassador, Resident or Agent to him, when they understand his Sword is taken from him? What reformed foreign Church will acknowledge Him Defender of the Faith, when they hear of this? Nay, they who wish England no good will, will go near to paint him out, as not long since another King was, with a fair velvet Scabbard, a specious golden hilt and chap, but the blade within was of wood. I hope that they who sway now, will make better use of their successses: Many of them know 'tis as difficult a thing to use a victory well, as to get one; there is as much prudence required in the one, as prowess in the other; they will be wiser sure then turn it to the dishonour of their King: it being a certain rule, that the glory of a Nation all the world over depends upon the glory of their King, and if he be any way obscured, the whole Kingdom is under an eclipse.  
I have observed, that among other characters of gallantry, which foreign Writers appropriat to the English Nation, one is, that they use to be most zealous to preserve the Honor of their King; I trust that they who are now upp will return to the steps of their Progenitors, both in this particular and divers other; that their successses may serve to sweeten and moderat things, and suppress the popular Sword which still rages; And it had been hearty wished that a suspension of Arms had preceded this Treaty, which useth to be the ordinary fore-runner, and a necessary antecedent to all Treaties; for while acts of hostility continue, some ill favoured news may intervene which may embitter and disturb all: nor can it be expected that the proceedings will go on with that candour and confidence, while the old rancour is still in action; 'tis impossible a sore should heal till the inflammation be taken away; To cast water into a wound instead of oil is not the way to cure it: or to cast oil upon a fire instead of water is not the way to quench it; poor England hath had a consuming fire within her bowels many yeeres, she is also mortally wounded in all her members, that she is still in a high Fever, which hath made her rave and speak idle a long time; and 'tis like to turn to a Hectic if not timely prevented. I p ay God she may have no occasion to make use of the same complaint as Alexander the great made when he was expiring his last, Perti turba Medicorum: too many Physitians have undone me.  
To conclude in a word, there is but one only way, under favour, to put a period to all these fearful confusions; it is, to put the great Master-wheele in order, and in its due place again, and then all the inferior wheels will move regularly; let the King be restored, and every one will come to his own, all interests will be satisfied, all things quickly rectified; till this be done, 'tis as absurd to attempt the settling of peace, as if one should go about to set a Watch by the gnomon of an horizontal dial when the Sun is in a cloud.  Dolor Capitis est Caput Doloris. 
Jam. howel. 16. Septemb. 1648.   

A Venice Looking-Glasse: OR, A LETTER WRITTEN very lately from LONDON to ROME, by a Venetian Clarissimo to Cardinal Barberino, Protector of the English Nation, touching these present distempers.  
Wherein, as in a true mirror, ENGLAND may behold her own spots, wherein she may see, and fore-see, her Follies passed, her present Danger, and future Destruction.  
Faithfully rendered out of the Jtalian into English.  
Fas est,& ab host doceri.  
Printed in the year, 1648.   

THE TRANSLATOR TO HIS COUNTRY.  
O England,( specially thou besotted City of London) if thou be'st not past cure, or grown careless and desperat of thyself, be warned by this Stranger, who, having felt thy pulse, and cast thy water very exactly, discovers in thee symptoms of inevitable ruin. Divers of thy own Children have oftentimes admonished thee with tears in their eyes, and terror in their hearts, to recollect thyself, but they have been little regarded: Let a foreigners advice then take place, and make some impressions in thee, to prevent thy utter destruction.   

TO HIS EMINENCE, THE LORD FRANCISCO BARBERINI, Cardinal of the most holy apostolic See, and Protector of the English Nation, at his Palaces in Rome.  
MY last to your Eminence was but short, in regard I had been but a short time in this country, I have now made a longer sojourned here, and taken a leisurely information of all matters; therefore I shal give your Eminence an account proportionably: For by conversation with the most indifferent, and intelligenc'd men, and by communication with the Ambassadors here resident, I have taken some pains to pump out the truth of things.  
I find, that angry star, which hath loured so long upon Europe in general, hath been as predominant, and cast as direful aspects upon this poor island, as upon any other part: Truly, my Lord, in all probability this people have passed the Meridian of their happiness, and begin to decline extremely, as well in Repute abroad, as also in the common notions of Religion, and indeed in the ordinary faculty of Reason: I think verily the Ill Spirit never reigned so much in any corner of the earth by those inhuman and horid things that I have observed among them, Nor is it a petty Spirit, but one of the greatest Cacodaemons that thus drives them on, and makes them so active in the pursuance of their own perdition.  
To deduce matters from their original, Your Eminency may please to understand, that this King at his access to the Crown had deep debts to pay, both of His Fathers, and his own, he was left engaged in a fresh war with Spain; and had another presently after with France, and both at one time, but he came off well enough of those: Afterwards never any country flourished in that envied happiness, and wanton kind of prosperity; This City of London was grown to be the greatest Mart, and mistress of Trade, of any in the world, Insomuch, as I have been certainly informed, the King might have eaten merely upon His customs 4000 crownes a day: Moreover, she had a vast bank of money being made the scale of conveying the King of Spaines treasure to Flanders: Insomuch that in a few yeers she had above ten millions of his moneys brought hither, which she might have remitted in specie or in merchandise, and for which this King had five in the hundred for coinage: Yet could he not get beforehand with the world, having a sister with so many Nephews and nieces, having a Queen with divers children of His own,( at least 16 of the Blood-Royall) to maintain, with divers profuse Courtiers besides, which made Him more parsimonious then ordinary. The Warres then growing more active 'twixt spain and France, as also 'twixt Holland and spain both by Land and Sea, and divers great Fleets of Men of War as well French( who were grown powerful that way) as Dunkerkers, Spaniards, Hollanders, and Hamburgers, appearing daily in His narrow Seas, and sailing close by His Chambers, the world wondered this King had no greater strength at Sea, in case that any of the foresaid Nations should do him an affront, as some of them had already done, by denying to dash their Colours to His Ships: Insomuch that in Holland and other places he was pasquill'd at, and portrayed lying in his cradle lullaby'd and rocked asleep by the Spaniard: Hereupon being by advertisements from His Agents abroad, and frequent advice of His privy council at home, made sensible of the danger, and a kind of dishonour he was fallen into, and having intelligence that the French cardinal began to question his title to the Dominion of the Narrow Seas, considering He employed no visible power to preserve it, He began to consult of means to set forth a royal Fleet: but in regard the Purse of the crown was lightly ballasted, and that he had no mind to summon the three Estates, because of some indignities he had received in former Parliaments by the Puritan party,( a race of people averse to all Kingly Government, unless they may pare it as they please) his then attorney general, a great cryed-up-Lawyer, put it in his Head to impose an old Tax called shipmoney upon the Subject, which the said Lawyer did warrant upon his life to be legal, for he could produce divers Records how many of his Progenitors had done the like: The King not satisfied with his single opinion, referred it to His Learned council, and they unanimously averred it to be agreeable to the Law of the Land; yet this would not fully satisfy the King, but He would have the Opinion of His twelve Judges, and they also affirmed by their several vouches the said Tax to be warrantable; Hereupon it was imposed and levied, but some refusing to pay it, there was a suite commenced, during which all the Judges were to re-deliver their opinions jointly, and the business being maturely debated and canvased in open Court divers months, and all arguments produced pro& con, nine of the said twelve Judges concluded it Legal: Thereupon the King continued the imposition of the said Tax, and never was money employed so much for the Honour and advantage of a country, for he sent out every Summer a royal fleet to scour and secure the Seas; he caused a Galeon to be built, the greatest and gallantest that ever spread sail: Nor did he purse up, and dispose of one penny of this money to any other use, but added much of his own Revenues yearly thereunto: So the world abroad cried up the King of England to be awake again; Trade did wonderfully increase, both Domestic and foreign in all the three kingdoms; Ireland was reduced to an absolute Settlement, the arrears of the Crown payed, and a considerable Revenue came thence clearly to the Exchequer of England every year, the salaries of all Officers, with the pay of the standing Army there, and all other Charges being defrayed by Ireland her self, which was never done before. Yet for all this height of happiness, and the glorious fruits of the said shipmoney,( which was but a kind of petty insensible Tax,& a thing of nothing to what hath happened since) there were some foolish people in this Land which murmured at it, and cried out nothing else but a Parliament, a Parliament; and they have had one since with a vengeance.  
But before this occasion, it was observed, that the seeds of disobedience, and a spirit of insurrection was a long time engendering in the hearts of some of this peace-pampred People, which is conceived to proceed from their conversation and commerce with three sorts of men, viz. the Scot, the Hollander and the French Huguenot. Now an advantage happened that much conduced to necessitate the convoking of a Parliament, which was an ill-favoured traverse that fell out in Scotland; For the King intending an Uniformity of Divine worship in all His three kingdoms, sent thither the liturgy of this Church, but it found could and coorse entertainment there, for the whole Nation, men, women and children rise up against them: Hereupon the King absolutely revoked it by Proclamation, wherein He declared 'twas never His purpose to press the practise thereof upon the Consciences of any; therefore commanded that all things should be in statu quo prius, but this would not serve the turn, the Scot took advantage hereby to destroy Hierarchy, and pull down Bishops to get their demeans: To which purpose they came with an Army in open Field against their own Native King, who not disgesting this indignity, mustered another English Army; which being upon the confines of both kingdoms, a kind of Pacification was plastered over for the present. The King returning to London, and consulting His second thoughts, resented that insolency of the Scots more then formerly: Hereupon He summons a Parliament, and desires aid to Vindicat that Affront of the Scot. The Scot had strong Intelligence with the Puritan Faction in the English Parliament, who seemed to abet his quarrel, rather then to be sensible of any national dishonour received from him; which caused that short-lived Parliament to dissolve in discontent, and the King was forced to find other means to raise and support an Army by private loans of His Nobler sort of Subjects and Servants: The Scot having punctual advertisements of every thing that passed, yea, in the Kings Cabinet council was not idle all this while, but rallies what was left of the former Army( which by the articles of Pacification should have been absolutely dismissed) and boldly invades England, which he durst never have done, if he had not well known that this Puritan Party which was now grown very powerful here, and indeed had invited him to this expedition, would stand to him. This foreign Army being, by the pernicious close machinations of some mongrel Englishmen aforementioned, entred into the Bowels of the Country, the King was forced to call this present Parliament, with whom he complied in every thing, so far as to sacrifice unto them both Judge, Bishop, councillor and Courtier; yea, He yielded to the tumbling down of many tribunals of Justice, which were an advantage to his Prerogative; He assented that the Prelates, who were the most Ancient and Prime Members of the upper House, and had priority of all others, since the first constitution of Parliament in the enrolment of all Acts, He assented I say that these, who were the greatest prop of His Crown should be quiter outed from among the Peers; He granted them also a triennial Parliament, and after that, this perpetual; which words, to the apprehension of any rational man, carry with them a gross absurdity in the very sense of the thing: And touching this last Grant, I had it from a good hand, that the Queen was a friend to this Parliament, and your Eminence knows how they have requited Her since, but the main open councillor to this fatal Act was a Scot.  
Now the reason which they alleged for this everlasting Parliament was one of the baldest that ever I heard of, it was, that they might have time enough to pay the Scots Army, whereas in one morning they might have dispatched that, by passing so many Subsidies for that use, and upon the credit of those, they might have raised what money they would.  
The Parliament finding the King so pliable, and His pulse to beat so gently, like ill-natured men they fall from inches to ells in seeking their advantages: They grew so peremptory as to demand all the military strength of the Kingdom, the Tower of London, with the whole royal Navy, which they found in an excellent equipage, gramercy watery; so that the benefit of shipmoney, which they so clamoured at, turned most to their advantage of any thing afterwards.  
The Scot being Fidler-like returned to his Country with meat, drink, and money, the King went a while after to keep a Parliament there, wherein he filled every blank, they did but ask and have, for He granted them what possibly they could propound, both for their Kirk and State, many received Honour, and they divided Bishops Lands amongst them: for all which unparalleled Concessions of Princely grace, they caused an Act already in force to be published, viz. that it should be damnable Treason in the highest degree that could be, for any of the Scots Nation conjunctly or singly to levy arms, or any military Forces, upon any pretext whatsoever, without His Majesties royal Commission; and this they caused to be don by way of gratitude, but how they performed it afterwards the world knows too well.  
The King returning to London, in lieu of a wellcom to his two Houses of Parliament( to whom also before his departure he had passed more Acts of Grace then all his Progenitors, take them all in a lump) they had patched up a kind of Remonstrance, which was voted in the dead of night, wherein they exposed to the world the least moat in former government, and aggravated to the very height every grievance, all which the King had redressed before; and this Remonstrance, which breath d nothing but a base kind of malice, they presented as a nosegay to their sovereign Prince, to congratulate his safe return from a foreign country; which they caused to be printe●& published before he could give any answer thereunto. The King finding such a virulent spirit still reign in the House, and knowing who were chiefly possessed with it( whom he had impeached before, but saw he could get no justice against them) in such an extremity, he did an act like a generous Prince, for taking the palgrave with him, he took the first coach he met withall at his Court gate, and went to his House of Commons in person to demand five Members, which he would prove to be Traitors in the highest degree, and to be the Authors of all these distempers, protesting upon the word of a King, that they should have as fair& legal a trial as ever men had; in the interim he only desired that their persons might be secured: The walls of both Houses, and the very stones in London street did seem to ring of this high carriage of the Kings, and the sound went thence to the country, whence the silly Plebeians came presently in whole herds to this City, and strowting up and down the streets, had nothing in their mouths, but that the privilege of Parlement, the privilege of Parl●ment was broken, though it be the known clear Law of the Land, that the Parlement cannot supersede or shelter any treason.  
The King finding how violently the pulse of the gr●sly seduced people did beat, and there having been formerly divers riotous crues of base Mechaniques and Mariners, who had affronted both his own Court, and the two Houses besides, which the Commons, to their eternal reproach, connived at, notwithstanding that divers motions were made by the Lords to suppress them, the King also having private intelligence that there was a mischievous plot to surprise his person, removed his Court to the country.  
The King departing, or rather being driven away thus from his two Houses, by this mutinous City, he might well at his going away have obraided her in the same words as Henry the 3. did upbraid Paris, who being by such another tumultuous rabble driven out of her in the time of the Ligue, as he was losing sight of her, he turned his face back, and said, Farewell ingratefull city, I will never see thee again till I make my way into thee through thy Walls: Yet, though the King absented himself in person thus from the two Houses, he sent them frequent messages, that they would draw into A●●s what he had already assented unto, and if any thing was le●t yet undone by him, he would do it; therfore he willed them to leave off those groundless fears and jealousies wherewith they had amused both city and country; and he was ready to return at all times to his Palace in Westminster, provided that his Person might be secured from the former barbarisms& outrages: But in lieu of a dutiful compliance with their Prince, the thoughts of the two Houses ran upon nothing but war: The King then retiring into the North,& thinking with a few of his servants only to go visit a Town of his, he was denied entrance by a fatal unlucky wretch, who afterwards was shamefully executed, with his eldest son, by command of his new Masters of the Parlement: The King being thus shut out of his own town( which opened the first door to a bloody war) put forth a Declaration, wherein he warn d all his people that they should look to their proprieties, for if he was thus barred of his own, how could any private Subject be sure to be Master of any thing he had, and herein he was as much Prophet as Prince; For the Parlement-men afterwards made themselves Land-Lords of the whole kingdom, it hath been usual for them to thrust any out of his freehold, to take his bed from under him, and his shirt from off his very back. The King being kept thus out of one of his towns, might well suspect that he might be driven out of another, therefore 'twas time for him to look to the preservation of his Person, and the country came in voluntarily unto him by thousands to that purpose, but he made choice of a few only to be his gard, as the Parlementteers had don a good while before for themselves: But now they went otherwise to work, for they fell a levying, listing, and arming men by whole Regiments and Brigades till they had a very considerable Army a foot, before the King had one Musqueteer or Trooper on his side: yet these men are so notoriously impudent, as to make the King the first Aggressor of the war, and to lay upon Him all the ●lood that was spilled to this day, wherein the devil himself cannot be more shameless. The Parliamenteers having an army of foot and horse thus in perfect Equipage, 'twas high time for the King to look to himself, therefore he was forced to display his royal Standard, and draw his sword quiter out: Thus a cruel and most cruentous civill war began which lasted near upon four yeers without intermission, wherein there happened more battailes, sieges and skirmishes, then passed in the Netherlands in sourescore yeers, and herein the Englishmen may be said to get some credit abroad in the world, that they have the same blood running in their veins( though not the same brains in their skulls) which their Ancestors had, who were observed to be the activest people in the field, impatient of delay, and most desirous of battle then any Nation.  
But it was one of the greatest miracles that ever happened in this Land how the King was able to subsist so long against the Parlamenteers, considering the multiplicity of infinite advantatages they had of him by water and land: for they had the Scot, the Sea and the City on their side; touching the first, he rushed in as an Auxiliary, with above 20000. Horse and Foot completely furnished both with small and great ammunition and arms, well clothed and money'd: For the second, they had all the Kings Ships well appointed, which are held to be the greatest security of the iceland both for defence and offence, for every one of them is accounted one of the moving Castles of the kingdom: besides they had all the other standing stone-Castles, Forts, and tenable places to boot: Concerning the last,( viz. the City) therein they had all the wealth, bravery, and prime ammunition of England, this being the onely magazine of men and money: Now if the King had had but one of these on his side, he had in all probability crushed them to nothing: yet did he bear up strangely against them a long time, and might have don longer, had he kept the campane, and not spent the spirits of his men before towns; had he not made a disadvantageous election of some Commanders in chief, and lastly, had he not had close Traitors within doors, as well as open Rebells without; for his very Cabinet council, and Bed-Chamber were not free of such vermin, and herein the Parlementeers spent unknown sums and were very prodigal of the kingdoms money.  
The King, after many traverses of war, being reduced to a great streight by cross successses and counsels, rather then to fall into the hands of the Parlementeers, withdrew himself in a Servingmans disguise to the Scors army, as his last rendezvous, and this plot was managed by the French Agent then residing here; A man would think that that Nation wol'd have deemed it an eternal honor unto them to have their own King and countryman throw himself thus into their arms, and to repose such a singular trust in them upon such an Extremity: but they corresponded not so well with him as he expected, for though at first when the Parlamenteers solicited their dear Brethren for a delivery of the Kings person unto them, their note was then, if any foreign petty Prince had so put himself upon them, they could not with honor deliver him, much less their own Native King; yet they made a sacrifice of him at last for 800000. Crownes; whereupon Bellieure the French Ambassador being convoyed by a Troop of horse from the King towards London, to such a stand, in lieu of largesse to the souldiers, he drew out an half crown piece, and asked them how many pence that was, they answered 30. He replied, for so much did Judas betray his Master, and so he departed  
And now, that in the course of this historical Narration I have touched upon France, your Eminence may please to understand, that nothing almost could tend more to the advantage of that King, then these commotions in England, considering that he was embarked in an actual war with the House of Austria and that this island did do Spain some good offices; among other, by transport of his treasure to dunkirk in English bottoms, whereunto this King gave way, and sometimes in his own Galeons, which saved the Spainard near upon 20. in the hundred, then if he had sent it by way of Genoa; so that some think, though France made semblance to resent the sad condition of her Neighbour, and thereupon sent the Prince of Harcour, and the foresaid Monsieur Bellieure to compose matters, yet she never really intended it, as being against her present interest and engagements: yet the world thinks it much that she should publicly receive an Agent from these Parlamenteers, and that the French Nobility who were used to be the gallantest men in the world to vindicate the quarrels of distressed Ladies, are not more sensible of the outrages that have been offered a daughter of France, specially of Henry the great's.  
But to resume the thread of my Narration, the King( and with him, one may say, England also) being thus bought and sold, the Parlamenteers instead of bringing him to Westminster, which had put a Period to all distempers tossed him up and down to private houses, and kept the former Army still afoot: And truly I think there was never Prince so abused, or poor people so baffled, and no people but a purblind besotted people would have suffered themselves to be so baffled: for notwithstanding that no Enemy appeared in any corner of the Kingdom, yet above 20000. Tagaroons have been kept together ever since to grinned the faces of the poor, and exhaust the very vital spirits of town and country, and keep them all in a perfect slavery: Had the Parlement-men, when the Scots were gone, brought their King in a generous and frank way( as had well becomed Englishmen) to sit among them, and trusted to him( which of necessity they must do at last) as they had gained more honor far in the world abroad, so they had gained more upon his affections then I believe they will ever do hereafter.  
But to proceed, the King having been a good while prisoner to the Parlement, the Army snatched him away from them, and some of the chiefest Commanders having pawned their souls unto him to restore him speedily, in lieu thereof they tumbled him up and down to sundry places, till they juggled him at last to that small Ile where now he is surrounded with a gard of strange faces and if haply he begins to take delight in any of those faces, he is quickly taken out of his sight. These harsh usages hath made him become all gray and oregrown with hair, so that he looks rather like some Silvan satire then a sovereign Prince: And truly my Lord the meanest slave in St. Marks gallies or the abjects Captif in Algier bannier is not so miserable as he in divers kinds, for they have the comfort of their wifes, children and friends, they can convey and receive Letters, sand Messenggers upon their errands, and have private discourse with any; all which is denied to the King of great Britain, nay the young Princes his children are not permitted as much as to ask him blessing in a letter. In so much that if he were not a great King of his passions, and had a heart cast in an extraordinary Mould, these pressures& those base aspersions that have been publicly cast upon him by the Parlement itself, had been enough to have sent him out of the world e're this, and indeed 'tis the main thing they drive at, to torture his brain, and tear his very heartstrings if they could: so that whereas this foolish ignorant people speak such horrid things of our Inquisition, truly my Lord 'tis a most gentle way of proceeding being compared to this Kings persecutions.  
As the King himself is thus in quality of a captif, so are all his Subjects become perfect slaves, they have fooled themselves into a worse slavery then Jew or Greek under the Ottomans, for they know the bottom of their servitude by paying so many Sultanesses for every head; but here, people are put to endless, unknown, tyrannicall Taxes, besides plundering and Accize, which two words, and the practise of them( with storming of towns) they have learnt of their pure brethre● of Holland: and for coverings, these Parlementeer Saints think they may rob any that adheres not to them as lawfully as the Iewes did the egyptians: 'tis an unsommable mass of money these Reformers have squandered in few yeers, whereof they have often promised and solemnly voted a public account to satisfy the kingdom: but as in a hundred things more, so in this precious particular they have dispensed with their Votes: they have consumed more treasure with pretence to purge one kingdom, then might have served to have purchased two; more( as I am credibly  told) then all the Kings of England spent of the public stock since the Saxon Conquest: Thus have they not only beggared the whole island, but they have hurled it into the most fearfull'st Chaos of confusion that ever poor country was in; they have torn in pieces the reins of all Government, trampled upon all laws of heaven and earth, and violated the very Dictamens of nature, by making mothers to betray their sons, and the sons their fathers, but specially that great Charter, which is the Pandect of all the laws and Liberties of the free-born Subject, which at their admission to the House they are solemnly sworn to maintain, is torn in flitters: besides those several Oaths they forged themselves, as the Protestation and Covenant, where they voluntarily swear to maintain the Kings Honor and Rights, together with the established laws of the Land, &c. Now I am  told, that all Acts of Parlement here are laws, and they carry that majesty with them, that no power can suspend or repeal them, but the same power that made them, which is the King sitting in full Parlement; these mongrel politicians have been so notoriously impudent as to make an inferior Ordinance of theirs to do it, which is point-blank against the very fundamentals of this Government, and their own Oaths, which makes me think that there was never such a perjured pack of wretches upon earth, never such Monsters of mankind.  
Yet this simplo infatuated people have a Saint-like opinion of these Monsters, this foolish city guards them daily with Horse and Foot, whereby she may be said to kiss the very stones that are thrown at her, and the hand whence they came, which a dog would not do: But she falls to recollect her self now that she begins to be pinched in Trade, that that her Mint is starved, and that the Prince commands both Sea and River: yet the leading'st men in her common-council care not much for it, in regard most of them have left traffiqueing abroad, finding it a more easy and gainful way of trading at home, by purchasing Church-lands, plundered goods, and debts upon the Public Faith; thus the Saints of this island turn godliness into gain.  
Truly my Lord, I give the English for a lost Nation, never was there a more palpable oblaesion of the brain, and a more visible decay of reason in any race of men: it is a strange judgement from heaven, that a people should not be more sensible how they are become slaves to Rebells, and those most of them the scumm of the Nation, which is the basest of miseries: how they suffer them to tyramnize by a mere arbitrary extrajudicial power o'er their very souls and bodies, o'er their very lif●s and livelihoods; how their former freedom is turned to fetters, Molehills into Mountaines of grievances, shipmoney into Accize, Justice into Tyranny: For nothing hath been and is daily so common amongst them as imprisonment without charge, and a charge without an accuser, condemnation without apparance, and forfeitures without conviction.  
To speak a little more of the King, if all the infernal fiends had ligu'd against him, they could not have design d& disgorged more malice: they would have laid to his charge his fathers death, as arrand a lye as ever was hatched in hell: they would make him fore-know the insurrection in Ireland, whereas the Spanish Ambassador here,& his Confessor who is a very reverend Irish man,  told me, that he knew no more of it then the grand Mogor did: they charge him with all the blood of this civill war, whereas they and their instruments were the first kindlers of it, and that first prohibited trade: they intercepted and printed his private letters to his Queen, and hers to him,( Oh barbarous baseness!) but therein they did him a pleasure, though the intent was malicious, their aim in all things being to embitter and envenom the hearts of his people towards him; and this was to render him a glorious and well-belov d Prince, and for making him rich, all which they had vowed to do upon passing the Act of Continuance, they have made him poorer then the meanest of all his vassals, they have made him to have no propriety in house, goods, or Lands, or as one may say, in his wife and children: 'twas usual for the father to hunt in his Park while the son hunted for his life in the field, for the wife to lie in his beds, while the husband laid wait to murder him abroad; they have seized upon and sold his private Hangings and Plate, yea his very Cabinets, jewels and Pictures.  
Nor are they the honourablest sort of people, and men nobly extracted( as in Scotland) that do all this,( for then it were not so much to be wondered at) but they are the meanest sort of Subjects, many of them Mechaniques, whereof the lower House is full; specially the subordinate Committees, who domineer more ore Nobles and Gentry, then the Parliament-Members themselves their Masters.  
Touching those few Peers that sit now voting in the upper House, they may be said to be but mere ciphers, they are grown so degenerate as to suffer the Commons to give them the Law, to ride upon their backs, and do most things without them: There be many thousand Petitions that have been recommended by these Lords to the lower House, which are scornfully thrown into corners and never red; their Messengers have used to dance attendance divers houres and dayes afore they were vouchsafed to be let in or heard, to the eternal dishonour of those Peers, and yet poor spirited things they resent it not: The Commons now command all, and though, as I am informed, they are summoned thither by the Kings original writ but to consent to what the King and his great counsel of Peers( which is the true Court of Parlement) shall resolve upon; They are now from Consenters become the chiefest Counsellors yea Controwlers of all; nay some of this lower House fly so high as to term themselves Conquerors, and though in all conferences with the Lords they stand bare before them, yet by a new way of mixed Committees they carry themselves as colleagues: These are the men that now have the vogue, and they have made their privileges so big swollen, that they seem to have quiter swallowed up both the Kings Prerogatives, and that of the Lords: These are the G●andees, and Sages of the time●, though most of them have but cracked brains and crazy fortunes; Nay some of them are such arrand Knaves and coxcombs, that 'tis questionable whither they more want common honesty, or common sense; nor know no more what belongs to true policy then the left leg of a joint-stoole: They are grown so high a tiptoes, that they seem to scorn an Act of Amnestia, or any grace from their King, whereas some of them deserve to be hanged as oft as they have hairs upon their heads; nor have they any more care of the common good of England then they have of Lapland, so they may secure their persons, and continue their Power and Authority, is sweet, though it be in Hell. Thus, my Lord, is England now governed, so that 'tis an easy thing to take a prospect of her ruin; The Scot is now the rising man, who is the third time struck into her bowels with a numerous Army: They say he hath vowed never to return till he hath put the Crown on the Kings head, the sceptre in his hand, and the sword by his side; if he do so, it will be the best thing that ever he did, though some think that he will never be able to do England as much good as he hath don her hurt; He hath extremely outwitted the English of late yeers: And they who were the causers of his first and last coming in, I hold to be the most pernicious Enemies that ever this Nation had; for 'tis probable that Germany will be sooner free of the Swed, then England of the Scot, who will stick close unto him like a burr, that he cannot shake him off; He is become already Master of the Englishmans soul, by imposing a religion upon him, and he may hereafter be master of his body.  
Your Eminence knows there is a periodical fate hangs over all Kingdoms after such a revolution of time, and rotation of fortunes wheel; the course of the world hath been, for one Nation, like so many nailes, to thrust out another; But for this Nation, I observe by conference with ●ivers of the saddest and best weighdst men among them, that the same presages foretell their ruin as did the Israelites of old, which was a murmuring against their Governors; It is a long time that both Judges Bishops, and privy Counsellors have been muttered at, whereof the first should be the oracles of the Law, the other of the gospel, the last of state-affairs, and that our judgments should acquiesce upon theirs; Here as I am informed; 'twas common for evry ignorant client to arraign his judge; for evry puny Clerk to censure the Bishop; for evry shallow-brain home-bred fellow to descant upon the results of the council Table: and this spirit of contradiction and contumacy hath been a long time fomenting in the minds of this people, infused into them principally, by the puritanical Faction. Touching the second of these( I mean Bishops) they are grown so odious( principally for their large demeans) among this people, as Monks were of old, and one may say it is a just judgement fallen upon them, for they were most busy in demolishing Convents and Monasteries, as these are in destroying cathedrals and Ministers; But above all, it hath been observed that this people hath been a long time rottenhearted towards the splendour of the Court, the very glory of their King, and the old established Government of the land: 'tis true there were a few small leaks sprung in the great vessel of the State,( and what vessel was ever so tite but was subject to leaks?) but these wiseakers in stoping of one have made a hundred: Yet if this Kings reign were paralleled to that of Queen Elizabeth's, who was the greatest Minion of a people that ever was, one will find that she stretched the Prerogative as much: In her time as I have red in the Latin Legend of her life, some had their hands cut off for writing against her matching with the Duke of Aniou, others were hanged at Tyburn for traducing her government; she pardoned thrice as many Roman Priests as this King did, she passed divers Monopolies, she kept an Agent at Rome, she sent her sergeant at arms to pluck out a Member then sitting in the House of Commons by the ears, and clapped him in prison; she called them saucy fellowes to meddle with her Prerogative, or with the government of her household, she managed all foreign affairs, specially the wars with Ireland soly by her privy counsel; yet there was no murmuring at her reign, and the reason I conceive to be, that there was neither Scot or Puritan had then any stroke in England.  
Yet, for all their disobedience and grumblings against their Liege Lord the King, this people are exactly obedient to their new Masters of the House of Commons, though they sit there but as their Servants and entitle themselves so; and also though in lieu of the small scratches which England might happily have received before( all which the King had cured) these new Masters have made such deep gashes in her, and given her such deadly wounds, that I believe are incurable.  
My Lord, I find by my researches, that there are two great idols in this kingdom the greatest that ever were, they are the Parliament and the Pulpit; 'tis held a kind of blasphemy, if not a sin against the Holy Ghost to speak against the one, and the whole body of Religion is nailed unto the other, for there is no devotion here at all but preaching, which God wot is little better then prating. The abuse of these two hath been the source of all the distempers which now reign: touching the latter, it hath served as a subservient engine to prop up the power and popularity of the first; these malicious Pulpit-men breath out nothing thence but either sedition, schism or blasphemy: poor shallow brained Sciolists, they would question many things in the old Testament, and find Apocrypha in the New: And such is the violence wherewith the minds of men and women are transported towards these Preachmen, and no other part of devotion besides, that in all probability they will in time take a surfet of them: so that give this giddy people line enough there will be no need of Ca●holique Arms to reduce them to the Apostolic Church, they will in time pave the way to it themselves, and be glad to return to Rome to find out a Religion again.  
There was here before, as I am informed, a kind of a face of a Church, there were some solemnities, venerations and decencies used that a man might discover some piety in this people; there was a public liturgy that in pithy pathetical prayers reached all occasions; the Sacraments were administered with some reverence, their Churches were kept neat and comely; but this nasty race of miscreants have nothing at all of sweetness, of piety and devotion in them; 'tis all turned to a fatuous kind of more zeal after learning, as if Christianity had no sobriety, consistence, or end of knowledge at all: These silly things, to imitate the Apostles time, would have the same form of discipline to govern whole Nations, as it did a chamberfull of men in the infancy of the Church, they would make the same coat serve our Saviour at 30. yeers, which fitted him at three: 'tis incredible how many ugly sorts of heresies they daily hatch, but they are most of them old ones newly furbish'd; they all relate to Aerius, a perfect hater of Bishops, because he could not be one himself. The two Sectaries which sway most, are the Presbyterians and Independents, the Presbyterian is a spawn of a Puritan, and the Independent a spawn of the Presbyterian: there's but one hop 'twixt the first and a jew, and but half a hop 'twixt the other and an infidel; they are both opposite to Monarchy and Hierarchy; and the latter would have no Government at all, but a parity and promiscuous confusion, a race of creatures fit only to inhabit Hell: and one of the fruits of this blessed Parlement, and of these two Sectaries is that they have made more Jews and atheists then I think there is in all Europe besides; but truly my Lord I think the judgments of Heaven were never so visible in any part of the Earth, as they are now here, for there is rebel against rebel, House against House, city against Army, Parlement against Scot, but these two Sectaries I mean the Presb●terian and Independent, who were the fire-brands that put this poor island first in a flamme, are now in most deadly feud one against the other( though they both concur in this to destroy government:) And if the King had time enough to look only upon them, they would quickly hang, draw, and destroy one another.  
But indeed all Christian Princes should observe the motions& successses of these two unlucky Incendiaries, for if they should ligue together again( as they have often played fast and loose one with another) and prevail here, this island would not terminate their designs, they would puzzle all the world besides. Their Preachmen ordinarily cry out in the Pulpit, there is a great work to be done upon earth, for the reforming all mankind, and they are appointed by Heaven to be the chief Instruments of bringing it about: They have already been so busy abroad, that( with vast sums of money) they brought the Swed upon the Dane, and the very Savages upon the English Cavalier in Virginia; and could they confederat wi●h Turk, or Tartar, or Hell itself against them, they would do it: they are monstrously puffed up with pride, that they stick not to call themselves Conquerors; and one of the chief ring-leaders of them, an ignorant home-bred kind of Brewer, was not ashamed to vaunt it publicly in the Commons House, that if he had but 20000. men, he would undertake to march to Constantinople, and pull the Ottoman Emperour out of his throne.  
Touching the other grand idol the Parlement, 'tis true that the primitive constitution of Parlement in this island was a wholesome piece of policy, because it kept a good correspondence, and clos d all ruptures 'twixt the King and his people, but this thing they call Parlement now, may rather be termed but a cantle of one, or indeed a Conventicle of schismatics, rather then a great counsel; 'tis like a kind of headless Monster, or some ectropiated carcase; f●r there is neither King nor Prelate, nor scarce the seventh part of Peers and Commons, no not the twelfth part fairly elected; nevertheless they draw the people, specially this City, like so many stupid animals, to adore them.  
Yet though this institution of Parlement be a wholesome thing in itself, there is in my judgement a great incongruity in one particular; and I believe it hath been the cause of most distempers; It is, That the Burgesses are more in number then the Knights of Shires; for the Knights of the Shires are commonly Gentlemen well born, and bread, and versed in the laws of the Land, as well as foreign governments, divers of them; but the Burgesses of towns are commonly tradesman, and being bread in Corporations, they are most of them inclining to Puritamism, and consequently to popular government; these, exceeding the Knights in number, carry all before them by plurality of Voices, and so puzzle all: And now that I have mentioned Corporations, I must tell your Lordship, that the greatest fanaticism in the policy of this Kingdom, is the number of them; especially this monstrous City, which is composed of nothing else but of Corporations; and the greatest errors that this King, specially his Father committed, was to suffer this town to spread her wings so wide; for she bears no proportion with the bigness of the island, but may fit a Kingdom thrice as spacious; she engrosseth and dreines all the wealth and strength of the Kingdom; so that I cannot compa●e England more properly then to one of our Cremona goose, where the custom is, to fatten onely the heart, but in doing so the whole body grows lank.  
To draw to a conclusion, This Nation is in a most sad and desperate condition, that they deserved to be pitied, and preserved from sinking, and having cast the present state of things and all interests into an equal balance, I find, my Lord there be three ways to do it, one good, and two bad:  
1. The first of the bad ones is the Sword, which is one of the scourges of heaven, especially the Civill sword.  
2. The second bad one is the Treaty, which they now offer the King in that small island where he hath been kept Captif so long,( in which quality the world will account him still while he is detained there) and by that Treaty to bind him as fast as they can, and not trust him at all.  
3. The good way is, in a free confiding brave way( Englishmen like to sand for their King to London, where City, and country should petition him to summon a new and free full Parlement, which he may do as justly as ever he did thing in his life, these men having infringed as well all the essential privileges of Parlement, as every puntillio of it, for they have often risen up in a confusion without adjournment, they had two Speakers at once, they have most perjuriously and beyond all imagination betrayed the trust both King and country reposed in them, subverted the very fundamentals of all Law, and plunged the whole Kingdom in this bottomless gulf of calamities: another Parlement may haply do some good to this languishing island, and cure her convulsions, but for these men that arrogat to themselves the name of Parlement( by a local puntillio only because they never stirred from the place where they have been kept together by mere force) I find them by their actions to be so perverse, so irrational and refractory, so far given over to a reprobat sense, so fraught with rancour, with an irreconcilable malice and thirst of blood, that England may well despair to be healed by such Phlebotomists, or Quacksalvers; besides they are so full of scruples, apprehensions, and jealousies proceeding from black guilty souls, and gawl'd consciences, that they will do nothing but chop Logic with their King, and spin out time to continue their power, and evade punishment, which they think is unavoidable if there should be a free Parlement.  
Touching the King he comports himself with an admired tempered equ●nimity, he invades and o'remasters them more and more in all his answers by strength of reason, though he have no soul breathing to consult withall, but his own Genius: he gains wonderfully upon the hearts and opinion of his people, and as the Sun useth to appear bigger in winter, and at his declension in regard of the interposition of certain meteors 'twixt the eye of the beholder and the object, so this King being thus o'reclouded and declined shines far more glorious in the eyes of his people; and certainly these high moral virtues of constancy, courage and wisdom come from above; and no wonder, for Kings as they are elevated above all other people and stand upon higher ground, they sooner receive the inspirations of heaven; nor doth he only by strength of reason our wit them, but he wooes them by gentleness and mansuetude; as the Gentleman of Paris who having an Ape in his house that had taken his only child out of the cradle, and dragged him up to the ridge of the house, the parent with ruthful heart charmed the Ape by faire words and other blandishments to bring him softly down, which he did; England may be said to be now just upon such a precipice, ready to have her brains dashed out, and I hope these men will not be worse natured then that brute animal, but will save her.  
Thus have I given your Eminence a rough account of the state of this poor and pitifully deluded people, which I will perfect when I shall come to your presence, which I hope will be before this autumnal Equinox; I thought to have sojourned here longer, but that I am grown weary of the climb, for I fear there's the other two scourges of heaven that menace this island, I mean the famine and pestilence, especially this City, for their profaneness, rebellion and sacrilege: it hath been a talk a great while whether Anti-Christ be come to the world or no, I am sure Anti-Jesus, which is worse, is among this people, for they hold all veneration, though voluntary proceeding from the inward motions of a sweet devoted soul, and causing an outward genuflexion, to be superstitious, insomuch that one of the synodical Saints here printed and published a Book entitling it against Iesu Worship.  
So in the profundest posture of reverence I kiss your rest, being  
London this 16. of August, Stylo loci, 1648. My Lord, Your Eminences most humbly devoted 〈…〉   

A WINTER dream.  
Quae me suspensum Insomnia terrent? Virg.  
Saepe futurarum praesagia Somnia Rerum.  
 woodcut of crowned English rose  woodcut of crowned Scottish thistle  woodcut of crowned fleur-de-lis  
Printed Anno Domini QuanDo ReX AngLoruM VectI vIctItabat CaptIvus, 1649.   

The Printer to the Reader.  
BEcause the Interpretation of this Dream may be obvious to all ●●pacities, I have presumed, with the Authors leave, to prefix here the names of those Countreys he hints at.  

1. The States of Holland.  
2. High Germany.  
3. The Kingdom of Naples.  
4. The Republic of Venice.  
5. The Kingdoms of Spain.  
6. The Kingdom of France.  
7. The Kingdoms of England, and the confusions thereof by way of Apolog.  
8. The Scots.    

A Winter Dream.  
IT was in the dead of a long Winter night, when no eyes were open but Watchmen, and Centinell's, that I was fallen soundly asleep, the Cinq out-Ports were shut up closer then usually, and my sences so triple locked, that the Moon, had she descended from her watery Orb, might have don much more to me then she did to Endymion when he lay snoring upon the brow of Latmus Hill; nay,( be it spoken without profaneness) if a rib had been taken out of me that night, to have made a new model of a woman, I should hardly have felt it.  
Yet, though the Cousin-german of Death had so strongly seized thus upon the exterior parts of this poor Tabernacle of flesh, my inward were never more actif, and fuller of employments then they were that night.  
Pictus imaginibus, formisque fugacibus adstat  
Morpheus,& variis fi●git nova vultibus ora.  
Me thought my soul made a sally abroad into the world, and fetched a vast compass; she seemed to soar up and slice the air, to cross seas, clammer up huge Hills, and never restend till she had arrived at the Antipodes: Now some of the most judicious Geometricians and Chorographers hold that the whole mass of the Earth being round like the rest of her fellow Elements, ther be places, and poizing parts of the Continent, there be Peninsulas, Promontories and islands upon the other face of the Earth that correspond and concentre with all those Regions and Iles that are upon this superficies which we tread; Countries that symbolise with them in qualities, in temperature of air and climb, as well as in nature of soil; The Inhabitants also of those places which are so perpendicularly opposite, do sympathise one with another in disposition, complexions and humors, though the Astronomers would have their East to be our West, and so all things 'vice versa in point of position, which division of the Heaven is only mans institution.  
But to give an account of the strange progress my soul made that night; the first Country she lighted on was a very low flat country, and it was such an odd amphibious country, being so indented up and down with Rivers and arms of the sea, that I made a question whither I should call it Water or Land; yet though the Sea be invited and ushered in into some places, he is churlistly penned out in some other: so that though he foam and swell, and appear as high Walls hard by, yet they keep him out, maugre all his roaring and swelling.  
As I wandered up and down in this watery Region, I might behold from a streight long Dike whereon I stood, a strange kind of forest, for the trees moved up and down; they looked afar off as if they had been blasted by thunder; for they had no leaves at all; but making a nearer approach unto them, I found they were a nomberlesse company of Ship Masts, and before them appeared a great Town incorporated up and down with Water; 
Amsterdam.  As I mused with myself upon the sight of all this, I concluded, that the Inhabitants of that country were notable industrious people, who could give Law so to the angry Ocean, and occupy those places where the great Leviathan should tumble and take his pastime in; As my thought ran thus, I met with a man, whom I conjectured to be 'twixt a merchant and a master, his salutation was so homely; the air also was so foggy that me thought it stuck like cobbwebs in his mustachoes;& he was so dull in point of motion, as if his veins had been filled with buttermilk in lieu of blood: I began to mingle words with him, and to expostulate something about that country and people; and then I found a great deal of downright civilities in him: He  told me that They were the only men who did miracles of late yeers; Those innumerable piles of stones you see before you in such comely neat fabriques, is a place( said he) that from a Fish Market in effect is come to be one of the greatest Marts in this part of the world, which hath made her swell thrice bigger then she was 50. yeers ago; and as you behold this floating forest of Masts before her mole, so if you could see the foundations of her houses, you should see another great forest, being reared from under ground upon fair piles of timber, which if they chance to sink in this Marshy soil, we have an art to scrue them up again. We have for 70. yeers and above without any intermission, except a short-lived truce that once was made, wrestled with one of the greatest Potentates upon Earth, and born up stoutly against him, gramercy our two next neighbour Kings, and their Reason of State, with the advantage of our situation. We have fought ourselfs into a free State, and now quiter out of that ancient allegiance we owed him; and though we pay 20. times more in taxes of all sorts then we did to him, yet we are contented: We have turned War into a trade, and that which useth to beggar others, hath benefited us: Besides, we have been and are still the rendezvous of most discontented Subjects, when by the motions of unquiet consciences in points of Religion, or by the fury of the sword, they are forced to quit their own Countreys, who bring their arts of Manufacture, and movables, hither; In so much that our Lombards are full of their goods, and our banks superabound with their gold and silver which they bring hither in specie. To secure ourselfs, and cut the Enemy more work, and to engage our Confiderats in a war with him, we have kindled fires in evry corner; and now that they are together by the ears, we have been content lately, being long wooed thereunto, to make a peace with that King to whom we once acknowledged vassalage; which King out of a height of spirit, hath spent 500. times more upon us for our reduction, then all our country is worth; But now he hath been well contented to renounce and abjure all claims and rights of sovereignty over us; In so much, that being now without an Enemy, we hope in a short time to be masters of all the commerce in this part of the world, and to eat our Neighbours out of trade in their own commodities: We fear nothing but that excess of Wealth, and a surfet of ease may make us careless and breed quarrels among ourselfs, and that our general, being married to a great Kings daughter, may—  
Here he suddenly broken the thread of his discourse, and got hastily away, being haled by a ship that was sailing hard by.  
Hereupon my soul took wing again, and cut her way through that foggy condensed air, till she lighted on a fair, spacious, clear Continent, a generous and rich soil mantled up and down with large woods, where, as I ranged to and fro, I might see divers faire Houses, towns, Palaces and Castles, looking like so many carcases, for no human soul appeared in them; me thought I felt my heart melting within me in a soft resentment of the case of so gallant a country, and as I stood at amaze, and in a kind of astonishment, a goodly parsonage makes towards me, whom both for his comportment, and countenance, I perceived to be of a finer mould then that companion I had met withall before: by the trace of his looks I guessed he might be some Nobleman that had been ruined by some disaster: having acosted him with a fitting distance, he began in a masculine strong winded language full of aspirations and tough collision of Consonants, to tell me as followeth: Sir, I find you are a stranger in this country, because you stand so aghast at the devastations of such a fair piece of the Continent, then know Sir, because I believe you are curious to carry away with you the causes thereof, that those ruthful objects which you behold, are the effects of a long lingering war, and of the fury of the Sword, a cruentous civill War that hath raged here ubove 30. yeares: one of the grounds of it was the infortunate undertaking of a Prince, who lived not far off in an affluence of all earthly felicity; he had the greatest Lady to his wife, the best purse of money, the fairest Stable of horse, and choicest Library of books of any other of his neighbour Princes. But being by desperate and aspiring counsels put upon a kingdom, while he was catching at the shadow of a crown, he lost the substance of all his own ancient possessions: by the many powerful alliances he had( which was the cause he was pitched upon) ●he feud continued long; for among others a Northern King took advantage to rush in, who did a world of mischiefs, but in a few yeers that King and he found their graves in their own ruins near upon the same time; but now, may heaven have due thanks for it, there is a pe●ce concluded, a peace which hath been 14. long yeers a moulding, and will I hope, be shortly put in execution; yet 'tis with this fatal disadvantage, that the said northern people, besides a mass of ready money we are to give them, are to have firm footing, and a warm nest ever in this C●untrey hereafter, so that I fear we shall hear from them too often: upon these words this noble parsonage fetched a deep sigh, but in such a ge●erous manner, that he seemed to break and check it before it c●me half forth.  
Thence my soul taking her flight o'er divers huge and horrid cacuminous mountaines, at last I found myself in a great populous town, but her buildings were miserable battered up and down, she had a world of Palaces, Castles, Convents and goodly Churches: as I stepped out of curiosity into one of them, upon the West side there was a huge grace, where a creature all in white beckoned at me, making my app oach to the grace, I found her to be a Nun, a lovely creature she was, for I could not distinguish which was whiter, her hue or her habit, her vail other face, it made me remember( though in a dream myself) that saying, If Dreams and wishes had been true, there had not been found a true maid to make a Nun of ever since a cloistered life began first among women; I asked her the reason how so many ugly devastations should befall so beautiful a City, she in a dolorous gentle tone, and ruthful accents, the tears trickling down her cheeks like so many pearls,( such pearly tears that would have dissolved a Diamond) sobbed out unto me this speech: Gentle Sir, 'tis far beyond any expressions of mine, and indeed beyond human imagination to conceive the late calamities which have befallen this faire though infortunate City, a pernicious popular Rebellion broken out here upon a sudden into most horrid barbarisms, a Fate that hangs over most rich popular places that swim in luxe and plenty; but touching the grounds thereof, one may say that rebellion entred into this City, as sin first entred into the world by an apple: For our King now in his great extremities having almost half the world banding against him, and putting but a small tax upon a basket of fruit to last only for a time, this fruit-tax did put the peeples teeth so on edge, that it made them gnash against the Government, and rush into arms; but they are sensible now of their own follies, for I think never any place suffered more in so short a time: the civill combustions abroad in other kingdoms may be said to be but small squibs compared to those horrid flakes of fire which have raged here, and much ado we had to keep our vestal fire free from the fury of it: in less then the revolution of a year it consumed above fourscore thousand souls within the walls of this City; But 'tis not the first time of forty, that this luxurious foolish people hath smarted for their insurrections and insolences, and that this mad horse hath o'rethrowne his Rider, and drawn a worse upon his back; who instead of a saddle, put a pack-saddle and Panniers upon him: but indeed the voluptuousness of this people was grown ripe for the judgement of heaven; she was then beginning to expostulat with me about the state of my country, and I had a mighty mind to satisfy her, for I could have corresponded with her in the relation of as strange things, but the Lady Ahadesse calling her away, she departed in an instant, obedience seemed to be there so precise and punctual.  
I steered my course thence through a most delicious country to another City that lay in the very bosom of the Sea, she was at first nothing else but a kind of posy made up of dainty green hillocks, tied together by above 400. bridges, and so coagulated into a curious city; though she be espoused to Neptune very solemnly once evry year, yet she still reserves her maydenhead, and bears the title of the Virgin city in that part of the world; But I found her tugging mainly with a huge Giant that would ravish her; He hath shrewdly set on her skirts, and a great shane it is, that she is not now assisted by her Neighbours,& that they should be together by the ears when they should do so necessary a work, considering how that great Giant is their common Enemy; and hath lately vowed seven yeers wars against her; specially considering, that if he comes once to ravish her, he will quickly ruin them; She( to her high honor be it spoken) being their only rampart against the incursion of the said Giant, and by consequence their greatest security.  
From this Maiden city, me thought, I was in a trice carried over a long gulf, and so through a Midland Sea, into another kingdom, where I felt the climb hotter by some Degrees; a rough hew'n soil, for the most part, it was, full of craggy barren ●ills; but where there were valleys and water enough, the country was extraordinarily fruitful, whereby nature( it seems) made her a compensation for the sterility of the rest. Yet notwithstanding the hardship of the soil, I found her full of Abbeys, Monasteries, Hermitages, Convents, Churches, and other places of devotion; As I rov'd there a while, I encountered a grave man in a long black cloak, by the fashion whereof, and by the brimms of his hat, I perceived him to be a Jesuit; I closed with him, and questioned with him about that country: He  told me the King of that country was the greatest Potentat of that part of the world; and, to draw power to a greater unity, they of our Order could be well contented, that he were universal Head over temporals, because 'tis most probable to be effected by him, as we have already one universal Head over spirituals: This is the monarch of the Mines, I mean of Gold and Silver, who furnishes all the world, but most of all his own Enemies with money, which money foments all the wars in this part of the world: Never did any earthly monarch thrive so much in so short a tract of time; But of late yeers he hath been illfavouredly shaken by the revolt and utter defection of two sorts of Subjects, who are now in actual arms against him on both sides of him at his own doors. There hath been also a long deadly feud 'twixt the next tramontan Kingdom and him, though the Queen that rules there be his own sister, an unnatural odious thing: But it seems God Almighty hath a quarrel of late yeers with all earthly potentates; for in so short a time there never happened such strange shocks and revolutions: The great Emperour of Ethiopia hath been outed, he and all his children by a petty companion: The King of China a greater Emperour then he, hath lost almost all that huge Monarchy by the incursion of the Tartar, who broken ore the Wall upon him; The grand Turk hath been strangled, with 30. of his Concubines; The Emperur of Muscovy hath been content to beg his life of his own vassals,& to see before his face divers of his chief Officers hacked to pieces,& their heads cut off& steeped in strong water, to make them burn more bright in the market place. Besides theabove mentioned, this King hath also divers Enemies more, yet he bears up against them all indifferently well, though with infinite expense of treasure: and the Church, specially our Society, hath stuck close unto him in these his exigents: whence may be inferred, that let men repined as long as they will at the possessions of the Church, they are the best anchors to a State in a storm, and in time of need to preserve it from sinking; besides acts of charity would be quiter lost among men, did not the wealth of the Church keep life in them: Hereupon drawing a huge pair of Beads from under his cloak, he began to ask me of my Religion; I  told him I had a long journey to go, so that I could not stay to wait on him longer; so we partend, and me thought I was very glad, to be rid of him so well.  
My soul then made another flight over an Assembly of hideous high hills, and lighted under another Clyme, on a rich and copious country resembling the form of a Losenge, but me thought, I never saw so many poor people in my life; I encountered a Peasan, and asked him what the reason was, that there should be so much poverty in a country where there was so much plenty: Sir, they keep the Commonalty poor in pure policy here; for being a people, as the world observes us to be, that are more humorous then others, and that love variety and change, if we were suffered to be pampered with wealth, we would ever and anon rise up in tumults, and so this kingdom should never be quiet, but subject to intestine broils, and so to the hazard of any invasion: But there was of late a devilish cardinal, whose humour being as sanguine as his habit, and working upon the weakness of his Master, hath made us not onely poor, but stark beggars, and we are like to continue so by an eternal war, wherein he hath plunged this poor Kingdom, which war must be maintained with our very vital spirits: but as dejected and indigent as we are, yet upon the death of that ambitious cardinal, we had risen up against this, who hath the Vogue now,( with whom he hath left his principles) had not the fearful example of our next transmarin Western neighbours, and the knowledge we have of a worse kind of slavery, of those endless arbitrary taxes, and horrid confusions they have fooled themselves lately into, utterly deterred us, though we have twenty times more reason to rise then ever they had: yet our great City hath shew'd her teeth, and gnash'd them ilfavouredly of late, but we find she hath drawn water only for her own Mill, we fare little the better, yet we hope it will conduce to peace, which hath been so long in agitation. I cannot remember how I partend with that Peasan, but in an instant I was landed upon a large iceland, and me thought, 'twas the temperat'st Region I had been in all the while; the heat of the Sun there is as harmless as his light, the evening serenes are as wholesome there, as the morning due; the dog-days as innocuous as any of the two Equinoxes. As I ranged to and fro that fair island, I spied a huge City whose length did far exceed her latitude, but neither for length or latitude did she seem to bear any political proportion with that island: she looked, me thought, like the Jesuits hat whom I had met withall before, whose brimms were bigger then the crown, or like a petticoat, whose fringe was longer then the body. As I did cast my eyes upwards, me thought I discerned a strange Inscription in the air which hung just over the midst of that city written in such huge visible characters, that any one might have red it, which was this: Woe be to the bloody City.  
Hereupon a reverend Bishop presented himself to my view, his gray hairs, and grave aspect struck in me an extraordinary reverence of him: so performing those compliments which were fitting, I asked him of the condition of the place, he in a submiss sad tone, with clouds of melancholy waving up and down his looks,  told me; Sir, this island was reputed few years since to have been in the completest condition of happiness of any part on earth, insomuch that she was repined at for her prosperity and peace by all her neighbours, who were plunged in war round about her, but now she is fallen into as deep a gulf of misery, and servitude, as she was in a height of felicity and freedom before: Touching the grounds of this change, I cannot impute it to any other then to a surfet of happiness; now there is no surfet so dangerous as that of happiness: There are such horrid divisions here, that if they were a foot in hell, they were able to destroy the Kingdom of Satan: truly Sir, there are crep'd in more opinions among us about matters of Religion, then the Pagans had of old of the Summum bonum, which Varro saith were 300. the understandings of poor men were never so puzzled& distracted; a great while there were two opposite powers who swayed here in a kind of equality that people knew not whom to obey, many thousands complied with both, as the men of calicut who adore God and the devil,( Tamum Squantum, as it is in the Indian language) the one for love, the other for fear: there is a monstrous kind of wild liberty here that ever was upon earth; that which was complained of as a stalking horse to draw on our miseries at first, is now only in practise, which is mere arbitrary rule; for now both Law, Religion, and Allegiance are here arbitrary: Touching the last, 'tis quiter lost, 'tis permitted that any one may prate, preach, or print what they will in derogation of their anointed King: which word King was once a Monosyllable of some weight in this Ile, but 'tis as little regarded now as the word Pope( among some) which was also a mighty Monosyllable once among us: the rule of the Law is, that the King can do no wrong, there is a contrary rule now crept in, that the King can receive no wrong; and truly Sir, 'tis a great judgement both upon Prince and people, upon the one, that the love of his vassals should be so alienated from him; upon the other, that their hearts should be so poisoned, and certainly 'tis the effects of an ill spirit; both the one and the other in all probability tend to the ruin of this Kingdom. I will illustrat this unto you, Sir, by an Apologue as followeth.  
There happened a shrewd commotion& distemper in the Body Natural 'twixt the Head and the Members; not onely the Noble parts( some of them) but the common inferior organs also banded against him in a high way of unnatural presumption; The heart, which is the source of life, with the Pericardium about it, did swell against him; the Liver, which is the shop of sanguification, gathered ill blood: all the humors turned to Choler against him; The Arms lift up themselves against him, neither back, hams or knees would bow to him, nay the very feet offered to kick him; The four and twenty ribs, the reins, the Hypocondrium, the Diaphragma, the Miseraic,& Emulgent veins were fil'd with corrupt blood against him: yea the Hypogastrium and the bowels made an intestine war against him. While the feud lasted, it happened that these tumultuary Members fell out among themselves; The Hand would have all the fingers equal, nay the toes would be of even length,& the rest of the subservient members would be independent: They grew so foolish, that they would have the fondament to be where the mouth is, the breast where the bask, the belly where the brain, and the yard where the nose, the shoulders should be no more said to be backward, nor the legs downward; A bloody quarrel fell 'twixt the Heart and Liver, which of them received the first formation, and whither of the two be the chiefest officine of sanguification; which question bread so much gall 'twixt the Aristotelians& the Galenists; While this Spleen& strange tympany of pride lasted, it cau'sd such an ebullition and heat in the mass of blood, that it put the Microcosm, the whole Body in a high burning fever or Frenzy rather, which in a very short time grew to be a Heptic, and so all perished by a fatal consumption.  
I fear the same fate attends this infortunate island, for such as was the condition of that natural head, this Apolog speaks of, the same is the case of the politic Head and Body of this island; Never was sovereign Prince so banded against by his own Subjects, never was the patience of a Prince so put upon the tenter; He is still no less then a Captif, his children are in banishment in one country, his Queen in another, the greatest Queen of blood upon earth; a Queen that brought with her the greatest portion that ever Queen did in treasure; yet in twenty yeers and upwards, her jointure hath not been settled as it should be; nor hath she been crowned all this while according to matrimonial Articles; notwithstanding that, for the comfort of this Nation, and the establishment of the Throne, she hath brought forth so many hopeful Princes.  
But now Sir; because I see you are so attentive, and seem to be much moved at this Discourse, as I have discovered unto you the general cause of our calamities, which was not onely a satiety, but a surfeit of happiness, so I will descend now to a more particular cause of them; it was a Northern Nation that brought these cataracts of mischief: upon us; and you know the old saying, 
Out of the North  
All ill comes forth.  Far be it from me to charge the whole Nation herewith; no, but onely some pernitions Instruments that had insinuated themselves, and incorporated among us, and swayed both in our Court and counsels: They had a hand in every Monopoly; they had out of our Exchequer, and Customs near upon 400000. Crowns in yearly Pensions, viis& modis; yet they could not be content, but they must puzzle the peace and policy of this Church and State: and though they are people of differing intellectuals, differing laws, customs, and Manners unto us, yet for matter of conscience they would bring our necks into their yoke, as if they had a greater talent of reason,& clearer illuminations, as if they understood Scripture better, and were better acquainted with God Almighty then we, who brought them first from paganism to Christianity, and also to be reformed Christians: but it seems, matters have little thriven with them; nay the visible hand of heaven hath been heavily upon them divers ways since they did lift their hands against their native King; For notwithstanding the vast sums they had hence, yet is the generality of them as beggarly as ever they were; besides, the Civill Sword hath raged there as furiously as here, and did as much execution among them. Moreover the Pestilence hath been more violent, and sweeping in their chief Town then ever it was since they were a people. And now lately ther's the notablest dishonour befallen them that possibly could light upon a Nation, in that 7000. of ours should upon even ground encounter, kill, slay, rout and utterly discomfit thrice as many of theirs, though as well appointed and armed as men could be: And truly Sir, the advantages that accru to this Nation are not a few by that exploit; For of late yeers that Nation was cried up abroad to be a more Martiall people then we, and to have baffled us in open field in divers traverses: besides, I hope a small matter will pay now their arrearages here, and elsewhere; but principally, I hope they will not be so busy hereafter in our Court and counsel, as they have been formerly.  
Another cause of our calamity is a strange race of people sprung up among ourselfs, who were confederat with those of the North; they would make Gods House clean, and put out the candle of all ancient learning& knowledge; they would sweep it only by the light of an Ignis fatuus: but 'tis visibly found that they have brought much more rubbage into it; and whereas in reforming this house, they should rather find out the groat that is lost, they go about to take away the mite that's left, and so put Christs Spouse to live on mere alms: true it is, there is a kind of Zeal that burns in them,(& I could wish there were so much piety) but this zeal burns with too much violence and presumption, which is no good symptom of spiritual health, it being a rule, that as the natural heat, so the spiritual should be moderat, else it commonly turns to a frenzy: and that is the thing which causeth such a giddiness and distraction in their brains; This( proceeding from the suggestions of an ill spirit) puffs them up with so much mental pride; for the devil is so cunning a wrestler, that he oftentimes lifts men up to give them the greater fall: they think they have an inerring spirit, and that their dial must needs go true, howsoever the Sun goes: they would make the gospel, as the Caddies make the Alchoran, to decide all civill temporal matters under the large notion of slander, whereof they to be the Judges, and so in time to hook in all things to their Classis: I believe if these men were dissected when they are dead, there would be a great deal of Quick-silver found in their brains.  
Prob Superi, quantum mortalia pectora coecae  
No habent!—  
But I could pitty the giddiness of their brains, had they not so much gaules in their breasts, were they not so thirsting after blood, so full of poison and irreconcilable malice, in so much that it may be very well thought, these men are a kin to that race which sprung out of the Serpents teeth: these are they which have seduced our great counsel, and lead this foolish City by the nose to begin and foment this ugly War, insomuch that if those numberless bodies which have perished in these commotions, were cast into her streets, and before her doors, many thousand Citizens noses would bleed of pure guilt.  
Not to hold you long, these are the men, who have baffled common sense, blasted the beams of nature, and offered violence to reason; these are they who have infatuated most of the people of this island; so that whereas in times past, some called her the Ile of Angells, she may be ●erm'd now the Ile of Gulls, or more properly the Ile of Doggs, or rather indeed the Ile of Wolfs, there is such a true Lycanthropy come in among us: I am loth to call her the island of Devills, though she hath been branded so abroad.  
To conclude Sir, the glory of this Isle is quiter blasted; 'tis true they speak of peace, but while the King speaks to them of it, they make themselves ready for battle; I much fear, that Ixion-like, we embrace a cloud for peace, out of which ther will issue out centaurs, and Monsters, as sprung out of that cloud.  
Touching that ancient'st holy Order whereof you see me to be; I well hoped, that in regard they pretended to reform things only, they would not have quiter extirpated, but regulated only this Order: it had been enough to brayle our wings, not to have feared them: to have lopped& pruned, not to have destroyed root& branch of that ancient three which was planted by the hands of the Apostles themselves: In fine Sir, we are a lost people, 'tis no other Daedalus, but the high D●●y of heaven can clue us out of this labyrinth of confusions, can extricat us out of this maze of miseries: the Philosopher saith, 'tis impossible for man to quadrat a circled; so 'tis not in the power of man, but of God alone, to make a loyal Subject of a Roundhead: Among other things that strangers report of this island, they say that Winter here hath too many tears in his eyes: Helas Sir, 'tis impossible he should have too many now, to bewail the lamentable base slavery, that a free-born people is come to: and though they are grown so tame as to kiss the rod that whips them, yet their Taskmasters will not throw it into the fire.  
Truly Sir, as my tongue is too feeble to express our miseries, so the plummet of the best understanding is too short to sadom the depth of them.  
With this, the grave Venerable Bishop giving me his benediction, fetched such a sigh, that would have rended a rock asunder; and suddenly vanished( me thought) out of my sight up towards Heaven. I presently after awoke about the dawnings of the day, when one could hardly discern Dog from Wolf; and my soul, my Animulae vagula blandula, being re-entered through the Horn gate of sleep into her former mansion, half tired after so long a Peregrination; and having rubbed my eyes, distended my limms, and return'd to a full expergefaction, I began to call myself to account touching those world of objects my fancy had represented unto me that night; and when by way of reminisence I fell to examine and ruminate upon them; Lord, what a mass of Ideas ran in my head! but when I called to mind the last country my soul wandered in, me thought I felt my heart like a lump of led within me, when I considered how pat every circumstance might be applied to the present condition of England: I was meditating with myself what kind of dream this might be; whereupon I thought upon the common division that Philosophers make of dreams, that they are either 

Divine,  
diabolical,  
natural, or  
human.    
For the first, they are Visions more properly or Revelations, whereof there are divers examples in the holy Oracles of God, but the puddled crannies of my brain are not rooms clean enough to entertain such: Touching the second kind, which come by the impulses of the devil, I have heard of divers of them, as when one did rise up out of his sleep, and fetched a poniard to stab his bedfellow, which he had don, had he not been awake; Another went to the next chamber a-bed to his mother, and would have ravished her; but I thank God this dream of mine was not of that kind? Touching the third species of dreams; which are natural dreams, they are according to the humour which predominats; if Melancholy sway, we dream of black darksome devious places; if Phlegm, of waters; if Choler, of frays, fightings and troubles; if sanguine predominat, we dream of green fields, gardens, and other pleasant representations; and the physician comes often to know the quality of a disease by the nocturnal objects of the patients fancy.  
human dreams relate to the actions of the day past, or of the day following,& some representations are clear& even; others are amphibious, mongrel, distorted and squalid objects, according to the species of things in troubled matters; and the object is clear or otherwise, according to the tenuity or the grossnes of the vapours which ascend from the ventricle up to the brain.  
Touching my dream, I think it was of this last kind; for I was discoursing of, and condoling the sad distempers of our times the day before: I pray God some part of it prove not prophetical; for, although the Frenchman saith, songs sont Mensonges, dreams are delusions, and that they turn to contraries, yet the Spaniard hath a saying, 

Et ciego sonnavaque viae,  
Y era lo queen querria.   

The blind man dreamed he did see light,  
The thing he wished for happened right.   Insomuch that some Dreams oftentimes prove true; as S. Austin makes mention of a rich Merchant in Milan, who being dead, one of his Creditors comes to his son to demand such a sum of money which he had lent his father; the son was confident 'twas paid, but not finding the Creditors Receipt, he was impleaded and like to be cast in the suit, had not his fathers Ghost appeared to him, and directed him to the place where the Acquittance was, which he found the next day accordingly. Galen speaks of one that dreamed he had a wooden leg, and the next day he was taken with a dead palsy in one whole side. Such a Dream was that of William Rufus, when he thought he had felt a could gust passing through his bowels; and the next day he was slain in the guts, by the glance of an arrow, in new forest, a place where he and his Father had committed so many Sacrileges. I have red in Artimedorus, of a woman that dreamed she had seen the pictures of three faces in the moon like her self, and she was brought to bed of three daughters a little after, who all died within the compass of a month. Another dreamed, that Xanthus water ran read, and the next day he fell a spitting of blood.  
To this I will add another fore-telling Dream, whereof I have red, which was thus: two young Gentlemen being traveling abroad in strange Countreyes, and being come to a great town, the one lay far in the city, the other in an Hostry without the walls in the Suburbs: he in the City did dream in the dead of night, that his friend which he had left in the Suburbs rushed into his chamber panting and blowing, being pursued by others; he dreamed so again, and the third time he might see his friends Ghost appearing at his beds side with blood trickling down his throat, and a poniard in his breast, telling him; Dear friend, I am come now to take my last farewell of thee, and if thou rise betimes, thou shalt meet me in the way going to be butted; the next morning his friend going with his Host towards the Inn in the Suburbs where he left his friend, they met with a Cart laden with dung in the way, which being stayed and searched, the dead body was found naked in the dung.  
I will conclude with a notable dream that Osman the great Turk had, not many yeers since, a few dayes before he was murdered by his janissaries, 1623. He dreamed, that being mounted upon a huge camel, he could not make him go, though he switch'd and spurred him never so much; at last the camel overthrew him, and being upon the ground, onely the bridle was left in his hand, but the body of the camel was vanished: the Mufti not being illuminated enough to interpret this Dream, a Santon who was a kind of Idiot,  told him, the camel represented the Ottoman Empire, which he not being able to govern, he should be o'erthrown, which two dayes after proved true.  
By these, and a cloud of examples more, we may conclude, that Dreams are not altogether impertinent, but something may be gathered out of them; though the application and meaning of them be denied to man, unless by special illumination.  
Somnia venturi sunt praescia saepe diei.  
By dreams we oft may guess  
At the next dayes success.  

THus have you a rough account of a rambling Noctivagation up& down the world: I may boldly say, that neither Sir John Mandevile, or Coryat himself travelled more in so short a time: whence you see what nimble Postillions the Animal Spirits are; and with what incredible celerity the imagination can cross the Line, cut the tropics, and pass to the other Hemisphere of the world; which shows, that human souls have something in them of the Almighty, that their faculties have a kind of ubiquitary freedom, though the body be never so under restraint, as the Authors is.  
The last country that's here aimed at is known already; I leave the application of the rest to the discerning Reader, to whom only this Dream is addressed.   
FINIS.   

A LETTER TO THE earl OF pembroke Concerning the Times, and the sad condition both of Prince and People.  The Land mourneth because of Oaths. 
Printed in the year, 1647.   

To the Right Honourable Philip earl of Pembrock, and Montgomery, Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter, and one of His Majisties most Honourable Privy counsel, &c,  
My Lord,  
THis Letter requires no apology, much less any pardon, but may expect rather a good receprion, and thanks, when your Lordship hath seriously perused the contents, and ruminated well upon the matter it treats of, with your second and third thoughts, which usually carry with them a greater advantage of wisdom: It concerns not your body, or temporal estate, but things reflecting upon the noblest part of you, your soul, which being a beam of Immortality, and a type of the Almighty, is incomparably more precious, and rendereth all other earthly things to be but babbles and transitory trifles. Now, the strongest tie, the solemnest engagement and stipulation that can be betwixt the soul and her Creator, is an Oath. I do not understand common tumultuary rash oaths, proceeding from an ill habit, or heat of passion upon sudden contingencies, for such oaths bind one to nought else but to repentance: No, I mean serious and legal oaths, taken with a calm prepared spirit, either for the asserting of truth, and conviction of falsehood, or for fidelity in the execution of some Office, or binding to civill obedience and loyalty, which is one of the essential parts of a Christian. Such public oaths legally made with the royal assent of the sovereign from whom they receive both legality and life, else they are invalid& unwarrantable, as they are religious acts in their own nature, so is the taking and observance of them part of Gods honor,& there can be nothing more derogatory to the high Majesty and holinesse of his name, nothing more dangerous, destructive& damnable to human souls then the government and eluding of them, or omission in the performance of them. Which makes the Turks, of whom Christians in this particular may learn a tender piece of humanity, to be so cautious, that they seldom or never administer an oath to Greek, Jew, or any other Nation, and the re●son is, that if the Party sworn doth take that Oath upon hopes of some advantage, or for evading of danger and punishment, and afterwards rescinds it, they think themselves to be involved in the perjury, and accessary to his damnation: Our Civill Law hath a Canon consonant to this, which is, mortal peccatum est ei prastare juramentum, quem scio verisimiliter violaturum; 'tis a mortal sin to administer an Oath to him who I probably know will break it; To this may allude another wholesome saying, A false Oath is damnable, a true Oath dangerous, none at all the safest. How much then have they to answer for, who of late years have framed such formidable coercive general Oaths to serve them for engines of State to lay battery to the Consciences and souls of poor men, and those without the assent of the sovereign, and opposed point blank to former Oaths they themselves had taken: these kind of Oaths the City hath swallowed lately in gross, and the Country in detaile, which makes me confidently believe that if ever that saying of the holy Prophet, The Land mourns for Oaths, was appliable to any part of the habitable earth, it maybe now aplied to this desperate iceland.  
But now I come to the main of my purpose, and to those Oaths your Lordship hath taken before this distracted time, which, the world knows, and your conscience can testify, were divers; They were all of them Solemn, and some of them sacramental Oaths( and indeed, every Solemn Oath among the Ancients was held a Sacrament:) They all implyed, and imposed an indispensible fidelity, Truth and loyalty from you to your sovereign Prince, your Liege Lord and Master the King: I will make some instances: Your Lordship took an Oath when Knight of the Bath to love your sovereign above all earthly Creatures, and for His Right and dignity to live and die:  
By the Oath of Supremacy you swear to bear faith and true allegiance to the Kings Highnesse, and to your power to defend all jurisdictions, Privileges, pre-eminences and Authorities belonging to His Highnesse.  
Your Lordship took an Oath when privy counselor, to be a true and faithful Servant unto Him, and if you knew or understood of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against His Majesties Person, Honour Crown, or dignity, you swoare to let, and withstand the same to the uttermost of your power, and either cause it to be revealed to himself, or to others of His Privy counsel: The Oaths you took when Bedchamber man,& L. Chamberlain bind you as strictly to His Person.  
Your Lordship may also call to memory when you were installed Knight of the Garter,( whereof you are now the oldest living except aK. of Denmark) you solemnly swore to defend the Honour, and Quarrels, the Rights and Lordship of your sovereign: Now the Record tells us that the chiefest ground of instituting that Order by that heroic Prince Edward the Third was, that he might have choice gallant men, who by Oath and Honour should adhere unto him in all dangers, and difficulties, and that by way of reciprocation he should protect and defend them; Which made Alfonso Duke of Calabria so much importune Henry the Eight to install him one of the Knights of the Garter, that he might engage King Harry to protect him against Charles the Eighth, who threatened then the conquest of Naples.  
How your Lordship hath acquitted yourself of the performance of these Oaths your conscience( that bosom record) can make the best affidavit; Some of them oblige you to live and die with King Charles, but what Oaths or any thing like an Oath binds you to live and die with the House of Commons, as your Lordship often gives out you will, I am yet to learn: unless that House which hath not power as much as to administer an Oath( much less to make one) can absolve you from your former Oaths, or haply by their omnipotence dispense with you for the observance of them. Touching the political capacity of the King I fear that will be a weak plea for your Lordship before the tribunal of heaven, and they who whispers such chimaeras into your ears abuse you in gross; but put case there were such a thing as political capacity distinct from the personal, which to a true rational man is one of the grossest bulls that can be, yet these forementioned Oaths relate most of them merely unto the Kings Person, the individual Person of King Charles as you are His domestic counselor, and cubicular Servant.  
My Lord, I take leave to tell your Lordship( and the Spectator sees sometimes more then the gamester) that the world extremely marvels at you more then others, and it makes those who wish you best to be transformed to wonder, that your Lordship should be the first of your Race who deserted the crown, which one of your Progenitors said, he would still follow though it were thrown upon a hedge: Had your Princely Brother been living he would have been sooner torn by wild horses than have banded against it, or abandoned the King his Master, and fallen to such gross Idolatry as to worship the Beast with many heads. The world also stands astonished that you should confederate to bring into the bowels of the Land, and make eulogiums of that hungry people which have been from all times so cross and fatal to the English Nation, and particularly to your own honour: Many thousands do wonder that your Lordship should be brought to persecute with so much animosity and hatred that reverend Order in Gods Church which is contemporary with Christianity itself, and whereunto you had once designed, and devoted one of your dearest sons so solemnly.  
My Lord, if this Monster of Reformation( which is like an infernal Spirit clad in white, and hath a cloven head as well as feet) prevails you shall find the same destiny will attend poor England, as did Bohemia which was one of the flourishingst Kingdoms upon this part of the earth; The Common people there repind at the Hierarchy and riches of the Church, thereupon a Parliament was packed where Bishops were demolished, what followed? The Nobles and Gentry went down next, and afterwards the Crown itself, and so it became a popular confused anarchical State, and a Stage of blood along time, so that at last, when this Magot had done working in the brains of the foolish people, they were glad to have recourse to Monarchy again after a world of calamities; though it degenerated from a successive Kingdom to an Elective. Me thinks, my Lord, under favour that those notorious visible judgements which have fallen upon these Refiners of reformed Religion should unbeguile your Lordship, and open your eyes: For the hand of heaven never appeared so clearly in any human actions: Your Lordship may well remember what became of the Hothams, and Sir Alexander carry who were the two fatal wretches that began the War first, one in the North, the other in the South; Your Lordship may be also pleased to remember what became of Brooks the Lord, and Hampden, the first whereof was dispatched by a deaf& dumb man out of an ancient Church which he was battering, and that suddenly also, for he fell ston dead in the twinkling of an eye; Now, one of the greatest cavils he had against our liturgy was a clause of a Prayer there against sudden death, besides the fag end of his Grace in that journey was, that if the design was not pleasing to God, he might perish in the action: For the other wiseaker he be-sprinkled with his blood, and received his death upon the same clod of earth in Buckingham-shire where he had first assembled the poor Country people like so many goose to drive them gaggling in a mutiny to London with the Protestation in their Caps, which hath been since torn in flitters, and is now grown obsolet and quiter out of use. Touching Pym& strand, those two worthy Champions of the utopian cause, the first being opened, his stomach and guts were found to be full of pellets of blood, the other had little or no brain at all left in his skull being dead,& less when he was living: For Hollis who carried the first scandalous Remonstrance( that work of night,& the verdict of a starved jury) to welcome the King ●rom Scotland, and was the first of the five Members who were impeached by his majesty, he hath been since, your Lordship knows, the chief of the Eleven Members impeached by themselves, but with this difference, that they had justice against him, though the King could get none: But now this St. Hollis with the rest are a kind of runagates beyond the Seas, scorned by all mankind, and baffled every where, yea, even by the Boors of Holland, and not daring to peep in any populous Town but by owle-light.  
Moreover I believe your Lordship hath good cause to remember that the same kind of riotous Rascals which rabled the King out of town, did drive away the Speaker in like manner with many of their Membsps, amongst whom your Lordship was fairly on his way, to seek shelter of their janissaries: Your LP must needs find what deadly feuds fall daily 'twixt the Presbyterian and the Independent the two fiery brands that have put this poor Isle so long in combustion. But 'tis worthy your Lordships special notice how your dear Brethren the Scots( whom your Lordship so highly magnified in some of your public Speeches) who were at first brought in for Hirelings against the King for them, offer themselves now to come in against them for the King: Your Lordship cannot be ignorant of the sundry clashes that have been 'twixt the City and their Memberships, and 'twixt their Memberships and their men of war; who have often waved& disobeyed their commands: How this tatterdimallian Army hath reduced this cowed City, the cheated Country, and their once all-commanding Masters, to a perfect pass of slavery, to a true asinin condition; They crow over all the ancient Nobility and Gentry of the kingdom, though there be not found amongst them all but two Knights; and 'tis well known there be hundreds of private Gentlemen in the Kingdom, the poorest of whom, is able to buy this whole Host with the general himself and all the Commanders: But 'tis not the first time, that the Kings and Nobility of England have been baffled by petty companions: I have red of Jack Straw, Wat tiler, and Ket the Tanner, with divers others that did so, but being suppressed it tended to the advantage of the King at last; and what a world of examples are there in our story, that those Noblemen who banded against the Crown, the revenge of heaven ever found them out early or late at last.  
These, with a black cloud of reciprocal judgements more, which have come home to these Reformers very doors, show that the hand of divine justice is in't, and the holy Prophet tells us, When Gods judgements are upon earth, then the inhabitants shall learn justice.  
Touching your Lordship in particular, you have not, under favour, escaped without some already,& I wish more may not follow; your Lordship may remember you lost one son at Bridgenorth, your dear Daughter at Oxford, your Son-in-law at Newbury, your Daughter-in-law at the Charter-house of an infamous disease, how sickly your eldest Son hath been; how part of your house was burnt in the country, with others which I will not now mention.  
I will conclude this point with an observation of the most monstrous number of Witches that have swarmed since these Wars against the King,( more I dare say) then have been in this iceland since the devil tempted Eve; for in two Counties only there have been near upon three hundred arraigned, and eightscore executed; what a barbarous devilish office one had, under colour of examination, to torment poor silly women with watchings, pinchings, and other artifices to find them for Witches: How others by a new invention of villainy were connived at for seizing upon young children, and hurrying them on ship-board, where they were so transformed that their Parents could not know them, and so were carried over for new schismatical Plantations. My Lord, there is no villainy that can enter into the imagination of man hath been left here uncommitted; no crime from the highest Treason to the meanest trespass but these Reformers are guilty of. What horrid acts of profanes have been perpetrated up and down! the Monuments of the dead have been rifled! Horses have been watered at the Church Font, and fed upon the holy Table! Widows, Orphans, and Hospitals have been commonly robbed, and Gods House hath been plundered more then any! with what infandous blasphemies have the Pulpits rung, one crying out, that this Parliament was as necessary for our Reformation, as the coming of Christ was for our Redemption: Another belching out, that if God Almighty did not prosper this Cause, 'twere fitting he should change places with the Devil: Another, that the worst things our Saviour did, was the making of the dominical prayer, and saving the Thief upon the cross. O immortal God, is it possible that England should produce such Monsters, or rather such infernal fiends shaped with human bodies! yet your Lordship sides with these men, though they be enemies to the across, to the Church, and to the very name of Jesus Christ; Ile instance only in two who were esteemed the Oracles of this holy Reformation, Peters, and Saltmarsh; The first is known by thousands to be an infamous, juggling and scandalous villain, among other feats, he got the Mother and Daughter with Child, as it was offered to be publicly proved; I could speak much of the other, but being dead, let it suffice that he died mad and desperate. These were accounted the two Apostles of the times.  
My Lord, 'tis high time for you to recollect yourself, to enter into the private closet of your thoughts, and summon them all to counsel upon your pillow; consider well the slavish condition your dear Country is in, weigh well the sad case your liege Lord and Master is in, how he is bereaved of his Queen, His Children, His Servants, His Liberty, and of every thing in which there is any comfort; observe well, how nevertheless, God Almighty works in Him, by inspiring Him with equality and calmness of mind, with patience, prudence and constancy, how he makes His very Crosses to stoop unto Him, when His Subjects will not: Consider the ferventnes of the Propositions that are tendered him, wherein no less then Crown, sceptre,& Sword, which are things in-alienable from Majesty, are in effect demanded, nay they would not only have him transmit, and resign his very intellectuals unto them, but they would have him make a sacrifice of his soul, by forcing him to violate that solemn sacramental Oath he took at his Coronation when he was no Minor, but come to a full maturity of reason and judgement: make it your own case, My Lord, and that's the best way to judge of His: think upon the multiplicity of solemn astringing oaths your Lordship hath taken, most whereof directly and solely enjoin faith and loyalty to his Person; oh my Lord! wrong not your soul so much, in comparison of whom your body is but a rag of rottenness.  
Consider that acts of loyalty to the crown are the fairest columns to bear up a Noblemans name to future ages, and register it in the temple of immortality. Reconcile yourself therfore speedily unto your liege Lord& Master, think upon the infinite private obligations you have had both to Sire and Son: The Father kissed you often, kiss you now the Sun left he be too angry; And Kings, you will find, my Lord, are like the Sun in the heavens, which may be clouded for a time, yet he is still in his sphere, and will break out again, and shine as gloriously as ever; Let me tell your Lordship that the people begin to grow extreme weary of their Physitians, they find the remedy to be far worse then their former disease; nay they stick not to call some of them mere Quacksalvers rather then Physitians; Some go further, and say they are no more Parliament, than a Pye-powder ●ourt at Bartholomew-Fair, their being all the essential parts of a true Parliament wanting in this, as fairness of elections, freedom of speech, fullness of Members, nor h●ve they any head at all; Besides, they have broken all the fundamental rules, and privileges of Parliament, and dishonoured that high Court more then any thing el●e: They have ravished Magna Charta which they are sworn to maintain, taken away our birth-right, and transgressed all the laws of heaven and earth: Lastly, they have most perjuriously betrayed the trust the King reposed in them, the trust their Country reposed in them, so that if reason and law were now in date, by the breach of their privileges, and by betraying the double trust that is put in them, they have dissolved themselves ipso facto I cannot tell how many thousand times, notwithstanding that monstrous grant of the Kings, that fatal Act of continuance: And truly, my Lord, I am not to this day satisfied of the legality( though I am satisfied of the forciblenesse) of that Act, whither it was in his Majesties power to pass it or no; for the law ever presupposeth these clauses in all concessions of Grace, in all Patents, Charters, and Grants whatsoever the King p●sseth, Salvo jure regio, salue jure coronae.  
To conclude, as I presume to give your Lordship these humble cautions and advice in particular, so I offer it to all other of your rank office,& order, who have souls to save,& who by solemn indispensible Oaths have engaged them to be true and loyal to the Person of King charles. Touching his political capacity, which fancy hath been exploded in other Parliaments( except in that mad infamous Parliament where it was first hatched) and Acts passed that it should be high and horrible Treason to separate or distinguish the Person of the King from His Power; I believe, as I said before, this will not serve their turn at the dreadful Bar of divine justice in the other world: indeed that Rule of the Pagans makes for them, Si Jus jurandum violandum est, Tyrannidis causa violandum est, If an Oath be any way frangible, tis frangible for a Kingdom: We find by woeful experience that according to this maxim they have made themselves all kings by violation of so many Oaths; They have monopoliz'd the whole power& wealth of the kingdom into their own hands; they cut shuffle, deal, and turn up what trump they please, being Iudges and parties in every thing.  
My Lord, he who presents these humble advertisements to your Lordship, is one who is inclined to the Parliament of England in as high a degree of affection as possibly a free-born Subject can be; One besides, who wisheth your Lordships good, with the preservation of your safety and honour more really then he whom you entrust with your secretest affairs, or the White Jew of the Vpper House who hath infused such pernicious principles into you; moreover, one who hath some drops of blood running in his veins, which may claim kindred with your Lordship: and lastly, he is one who would kiss your feet, in lieu of your hands, if your Lordship would be so sensible of the most desperate case of your poor country, as to employ the interests, the opinion and power you have to restore the King your Master by English ways, rather then a hungry foreign people, who are like to bring nothing but destruction in the van, confusion in the rear, and rapine in the middle, should have the honour of so glorious a work,  
My Lord, So humby hoping your Lordship will not take with the left hand what I offer with the right, I rest Your most truly devoted Servant.  
FINIS.   

A TRANCE: OR, news from Hell, Brought fresh to hewn BY Mercurius Acheronticus.  
LONDON, Printed, and: Dom. 1649.   

Paraenesis Angliae.  
O England, England If thou be'st not given quiter over to a reprobate sense; If the least spark of Grace, the least ray of Reason, be yet remaining in Thee, be warned, be warned by this Trance, by the dreadful objects, the hideo●s and horrid apparitions thereof: If no temporal respects can win Thee, let the apprehensions of eternal ruin work upon Thee: If the hopes of Heaven cannot prevail with Thee, let the torments of Hell deter Thee, which are represented to the very life unto Thee in this ensuing Vision. Be not accessary to thy own destruction, to thy own damnation; Let not thy children be deluded any longer with chymeras of more liberty, and advancement of common good. 'tis true, To love one's country( which is the specious pretence of all these insurrections) is a commendable thing, yet it is but a Pagan precept; To fear God, to honour his Priests, to give Caesar his due, not to do evil that good may come of it, these are all Christian precepts, and Scripture principles.  
As the Author was in a Trance, so sure thou art in a fit of madness: Poor thing, thou want'st a physician to cure thee, rather than a Divine to confute thee: Return then, O return to thy wits, to thy old English temper again, else 'tis high time for Thee to make thy last Will, and that the Bell should ring out to invite thy Neighbours to the funeral of thy Liberty; And because I have already half promised, I will lay this Epitaph upon Thee: {αβγδ}.   

TO ENGLANDS imperial Chamber, THE Renowned City of LONDON: To the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, the Right worshipful the Sheriffs, the Court of Aldermen, and common-council, the Noble Company of Merchant-Adventurers, and Home-Corporations; to all the hopeful Apprentices, and all other Inhabitants, Inmates, or Aliens, within the said spacious City and Suburbs, is addressed what followeth.  
Perditio tua ex Te, L: 

O London, understand thy woe,  
Thou art thy Self thy greatest Foe;  
Be warned, be wise, prevent the Fates,  
Destruction bounceth at thy gates,  
And know, There is no earthly thing  
Can make thee happy, but thy King.   

Think with what Honour the first dagger came  
Into thy Shield, the Times are now the same.     

A TRANCE.  
The Proeme.  
such is the force of Fancy, so large is the reach, so boundless is the prerogative of human Imagination, that though the small concave of a skull some two or three spans compass be her ordinary and natural habitation, yet the whole Globe of the Earth, nor all the elementary world can totally confine her, but she will at pleasure climb up to the skies, and make a scale of the stars to conduct her to the Empyrean Heaven; Thence she can descend in a trice to the great abyss, and take a survey of the Kingdom of darkness; And though it be a maxim among Divines that ab Orco nulla redemptio, there's no return out of Hell, and that the passage back thence is irremeable, yet the Imagination of man hath this privilege, that she can make egresses and regresses, she can enter, and come off clear thence when she list, and all this if need be in an instant; wherein she seems to partake of that admired quality which is inherent in that most comfortable creature the Light, who is held the sovereign of all sensible qualities among the Philosophers, and to come nearest to the nature of a Spirit, which creature requires but an instantaneous moment and point of time to perform his office of illumination, and dilate himself throughout the hemisphere; whence some infer that he is not corporeal, in regard it is an unquestioned principle in nature that all bodies require a succession of time in their motion: but there is this difference twixt the Imagination and Light, that there be some places whereinto Light cannot enter, but there is no part of the Vnivers so impervious, where the Imagination may not make his accesses and recesses at pleasure; as will appear by the following example.  

IT fortuned very lately that I was in a Trance, a strange kind of ecstasy surprised me on a sudden, which lasted a good while; during the time, me thought I was transported to the remotest place, and of the greatest distance that possibly could be from Heaven; me thought I was in Hell, in Hell, God bless us, among the Devils, and damned Spirits; I had neither that golden branch, nor the help of a Sybilla Cumana to conduct me up and down as the Trojan Prince had, but me thought a Spirit did led me gently and softly all along till I came to Pluto●s Palace, where a special counsel was held to take a strict examination what service the three Furies, allecto, Tisyphone, and Megaera, with other inferior Fiends that were their Assistants, had done on Earth, towards the advancement of the Kingdom of darkness, since their last mission thither, which was presently upon the apparance of the last blazing Star in the year 1618. Pluto vouchsafed to be present and preside at this counsel, and to be Chaireman himself, to which purpose he had a strong Legion of Cacodaemons for his guard, but the business was prepared and facilitated for his hearing before hand by a Committee appointed of purpose for that end, whence I inferred that Committees were first hatched in Hell, especially some of those that we have now adays. The three ghastly daughters of Night appeared with dreadful fiery countenances before Puto, in lieu of air they evaporated huge flakes of fire, which they took in, and let out with the accents of their words, huge bunches of Snakes with their tails rooted in their skulls hung dangling and waving about their heads like dischevelld hair: A furious contestation fell between them who should be Proloquutrix, but in regard that allecto and Tisyphone had given an account of their former missions, the one of the League in France, the other of the revolt of the Hollander, it came now in due turn that Megara should have the priority of speech, so the youngest of the Tartarian Girls began as follows;  
May your high Acherontic majesty vouchsafe to understand, that since the last happy Comet, which by the Parallax was found to be in the Heaven, appeared, we have for 30 yeares together been more active, and more eager in your Majesties service than ever we were; We have incited the affections of the foolish Inhabitants of the earth to war, and to worry one another like Wolves in most places; To effect which our practise hath been to bring the beggerliest and toughest people upon the richest and softest; We brought the Swead upon the German, the Catalan upon the castilian, the Tartar upon the Chinots, the Sco● upon the English, and now lastly, the turk upon the Venetian, and the Cosaque upon the Pole; We have continued a lingering bloody war in Germany for thirty yeares together, which entangled into it most of the neighbouring States; We have thrust divers Princes out of their ancient Inheritances, among others the Duke of Lorain, and the palgrave of the Rhin; We brought two Grand Turks to be strangled which never happened before; We have often puzzled Italy, we have made the Kings of spain and France, though Brothers, to bandy so fierce one against the other, as if the one had been an infidel, the other a Jew; But Sir, the most advantageous and signal services we have done to your infernal majesty have been in the Iles of great britain and Ireland: For whereas we divided ourselves before, and went singly among other people, we went jointly thither all three, because we might be sure to bring out ends home to our aim. The Nation fittest for us to work first upon was the Scot, who have been so obedient to their Kings, that of above a hundred they brag of, scarce two parts of three dyed in their beds; We did suscitate them first against their native King, and to appear in a daring hostile manner before him upon the borders; At which time it cost us a great deal of labour so to besot the English, to abase their courage, and entangle them with Factions( having sure confidents among them to that end) that they durst not present them battle, and this Sir was an important piece of service, for had they fought then, or had they been sensible afterwards of the national dishonour they received at that time, their King being in the field, and consequently had they stuck to him afterwards to have vindicated it, all those Wars we have fomented since might have been prevented: We shortly after transmitted the same Spirit of Insurrection into Ireland, who being encouraged by the good successses the Scot had( for he had what he list, yet could he not sit quiet) and the Irish Commissioners being but harshly entertained by this English Parlement who intended to sand over a Deputy that should pinch them more than they were before in their consciences, besides in that they revoked that leave which the King had granted under hand and seal to the Spanish Ambassadors to have some part of Straffords Army in Ireland( which were our prime instruments for the Rebellion) to go for spain, with other incentives, we stirred the Irish also to rise in blood, which they did to some purpose. Then came we to work upon the English, whom we found as fit to receive our impression as Flax is to take fire, in regard of their long surfet of peace and plenty. We broken up one Parlement because most of the Members thereof were not for our turn; The first thing we did in this Parlement was to endue them with a faculty to create fears and jealousies whereof we have made excellent use, and although all those fears and jealousies appear since to the common people, and City of London, more plain than their nose on their faces to be but forgeries, yet we have so infatuated their intellectuals that we make them still adore the Inventors of them. And to give your Stygian majesty among divers others one more pregnant and undeniable demonstration what footing you have got you in that iceland, we have within these few yeares raised more Pythonesses( which the vulgar call witches there) than ever were in that iceland since your Majesty tempted Eve: And we enabled our Pythonesses to sand their Imps abroad in pursuit of your service. We stood at the Kings elbo when he passed that happy Act of continuance, and and a Scot was our chiefest engine to work that; The City of London stood us also in excellent stead to bring our designs about; We made the riff-raff of that City, as V. with his Myrmydons, and B. with his bandogs( for so they called the rakells they had raised) to rabble th● King out of Town; We brought also into London the silly swains of the country in whole swarms upon they knew not what; We were in Kinton field, and made, the youthful general of the Kings Cavalry de gayete de coeur to pursue the Parlements Cavalry so far, as the day was lost by it, whereas if he had stuck gloze to the Infantry the business had been dispatched then on the Kings side, and so your Majesties service since had been frustrated; We were at Marston Moore, and made the same general so impatient that he could not forbear fighting till the next day, else he had taken all the Roundhead Army in a pound; We took great pains at leicester that the King should not march Northward, but fortify the place and go back to Naseby where we had our Imps that bestird themselves notably; We so managed the business afterwatds that we made the King, because he is a professed enemy to your Majesty, to go disguised in a Servingmans habit to his countrymen the Scots, and we prevailed so far with them that they delivered him over as a Sacrifice, and betrayed him like Iudas to the English who have crucified ever since like Iewes, by tossing, and tumbling him up and down, and by compulsory means to work upon His conscience, and stretching it upon the tenter; We made Pembrock Castle, and Colchester, with other single( or rather simplo) Counties to rise of purpose to betray themselves: In sum, we have reduced that Kingdom to a new conformity with this of your Majesties, to a sweet Chaos of all confusion, we have brought the sway solely into the common peoples hands; And never did common people more truly act the part, and discover the genius of a common people more lively, whose nature is still thirsting after novelties and Utopian reformations, though they fool themselves thereby into a base kind of slavery, finding when 'tis too late those sprecious ideas, and confused forms of Government they apprehended before, and hugged in their own conceits to be mere absurdities, when they come to the application and practise of them.  
And Sir, the most advantageous instruments we have used to bring all this about, have been the Pulpit and the press; by these we diffused those surmises and suppositious fears formerly spoken of, to intoxicate the brains of the people: In stead of Lights we put Firebrands into their Churches, who, as we did dictate unto them, did bawl out nothing but Sedition and blood, we have made some of them to bring divers to have as good an opinion of the Alchoran as of their liturgy; we have made secular Ordinances to batter down all ancient ecclesiastic Canons; we have made them to unsaint all those whom they call Apostles in heaven, and to rob their Churches on earth; we have made them put division twixt the Trinity itself; we have made their Pulpiteers to preach the Law and your kingdom in the Church, but the gospel and Heaven in the Chamber; we have brought them to keep their Fast day more solemnly then the sabbath, upon which, we have made them not only to sit in counsel, but to put in execution all designs of blood. But the main, and most material thing we have made use of, was spiritual pride, your Majesties old acquaintance, which we have infused into the mind of every Mecanique and country swain, who will boldly now undertake to expound any Text of Scripture, New or Ol, dupon the warrant of their own brains, and by the light of their own fires; Insomuch that we have made that Book which they call the Bible, that was ordained first for their Salvation, to be the chiefest Instrument of their Damnation We have brought these Exotic words, Plundering and Storming, which were never known among them before, and that once abominable word, Excise, to be now familiar among them, they are made all three free denizens, and legitimated among them; We have raised an Army of the dregs of the people, though of precious stuff to your Majesty, and so puffed them with the pride of their good successses, and so fleshed them in blood, that they are no more tender of a mans or womans life then they are of a dog or a cats; We have made those that came Petitioners for Peace to be murdered, and those that came for War to be thanked and hugged; We have reduced them to such slavery as to make the very countenances of men to be commented upon, and their very thoughts to be plundered; We have made the mother to betray her child, the child the father, the husband his wife, the servant his master; We have brought a perfect tyranny ore their very souls and bodies; upon the one, by tedious and endless imprisonment, with the forfeiture of all their livelihoods before conviction or charge; upon the other, by forcing them to swallow contradictory Oaths. On that foolish superstitious day called Christmas, with other festivals, we have brought them to shut up their Churches, and open their shops, so that in time they will forget the very memory of their Saviours Incarnation; We have brought them to have as little reverence of their Temples as of their Tap-houses, and to hold the Church to be but a Charnell-house of rotten bones; and though they cringe, and knee, and stand bare before any wrangling Bench of Common Pleas, yet we have so stiffened their joints, and made their heads so tender in that which they call Gods House, that they can neither bow the one there, nor scarce uncover the other; We have fil'd lately the Tribunals in Westminster Hall with Favourers of your Cause, which makes some of them look rather like Iuglers than Iudges; We have made the Fundamentals of Law to be termed but Formalities; We have caused Magna Charta to be torn to a thousand flitters, and stretched the privilege of the Commons so wide, that it hath swallowed up all other; We have grub'd up and cast away those hopeful Plants that grew in their two Seminaries of Learning, and set in their room grafts of our own choice. And Sir, your precious children, and our dear brethren, the Angels of the Army, have comported themselves notably for the improvement of your Majesties service in all these things, into whom we have infused such principles that Machiavill himself were he alive there, would be accounted a Baby in comparison of them. Among divers other wholesome maxims, we have instilled this into their brains, that villainies must be supported by villains, and mischief cannot be safe but by attempting greater; We have made the wealth of Town and country, of poor and rich, to glitter in Plunder upon their backs; We make them to command Free-quarter of those who who were fitter to ask them alms; We have made them to rifle the Monuments of the Dead, to rob the Lazaretto, to strip the orphan and Widow, to violate and pillage all things that were dedicated to God; We have made them wreek their revenge upon the very vegetables, to make socks of Surplices, to water their beasts at the Font, to feed them on the Communion Table, and to term the thing they call a Sacrament, a Two penny Banquet: Sir, we have turned supposed Superstition to absolute profaneness, Government to Confusion, and freedom to pure Slavery; We have brought their King to live in a manner upon Charity, and His Queen to beg of the French Friers, and His Children to be a kind of runagates up and down the world; We have so intoxicated that dear Daughter of yours the City of London, that she knows not which way to turn her self; And whereas her Apprentices did rise up like Tigers against their King, they are now become as so many silly sheep against our Army; We have puzzled them with such vertiginous fancies and fears among themselves, that one neighbour dare not trust the other. To conclude Sir, we have eclipsed the glory of the English Nation, we have made them by all people far and near that ever had knowledge of them, to be pitied by some, to be derided by others, to be scorned of all, and to become the very tail of all Nations; In fine Sir, we have brought that Kingdom to such a pass of confusion, that it is a fit place only for your Imperial Phlegetontic Majesty to inhabit; And Sir, there's never a cross now there fright you, unless it be upon their coins of Gold and Silver, whereon they leave Crosses to be still in honour of your Plutonian Highnesse, as you are Dis, and God of riches.  
Megaera having thus given up her account in behalf of her self and her two Sisters, they all bowed their snaky heads down to their feet, which were toed with Scorpions, before the black Throne of Pluto, who giving a hum that made all Hell to tremble, answered thus:  
MY precious and most trusty Tartarean Daughters, we highly approve of the supererogatory service you have done us for the propagation of the Stygian Empire upon earth, and specially in great Brittany: we have sued a long time to have a Lease of that island( touching Scotland we have no mind to go thither ourself) and we hope to obtain it, therefore when you have visited those of that Nation whom you have sent hither already to people this P●t, I would have you return thither, and prepare that place for one of my principal habitations: The proper'st instrument you are to employ, is the Army, and you must continue to infuse such principles into their heads, that they never desist till they have quiter thrust out Religionem ex solo, Regem ex solio, and Dominium ex salo.  
Nec sic recedant odia, vivaces agate  
Violentus ir as animus,& savus furor  
Eterna bella place sublata gerat.  
Make rebel to fight against rebel, independent against Presbyterian, London against the Army, and all against the Cavalier, till that Nation be wholly extinguished, that one may not be left to piss against a wall; Let them never rest till they have made an end of the King who is our greatest enemy; Let those Idolatrous Bishops which in that idle legend their gospel are called Angells, be utterly extirpated, and the very name of them banished for ever, as the Tarquins were once at Rome; Let not a Church or chapel, or any consecrated place stand in the whole Isle, I intend to have a new almanac of Saints made at my coming, for I have some Star-gazers there already fit for my purpose; make hast, for fear a peace be shuffled up on a sudden, and acquit yourselves of your duties, and I may chance get you Scotland for your reward.  
The three Furies with a most profound reverence replied, May it please your majesty, your Ferriman Charon is hourly so pestered with such multitudes of English and Scots roundheads, that we were forced to stay a long time ere we could get a passage hither, and we fear we shall be so hindered again; therefore we most humbly desire for our expedition, that your Highnesse would vouchsafe to give us a special warrant to be served first with a non obstante when we come to the banks of Styx. You shall dear Daughters, saith Pluto, and my warrant shall be addressed to a new Journey-man, an English Tarpaling that came thither lately to serve Charon, upon whom I will lay my commands of purpose to attend you upon all occasions.  
Having all this while listened unto what passed 'twixt Pluto and his Furies, my Spirit led me up and down Hell to see the various sorts of torments that are there, which indeed are innumerable: the first I beholded was Ixion, tied with vipers to a wheel, and whirled about perpetually, I might perceive a multitude of lesser wheels newly made thereabouts, whereunto great numbers of English, and divers of my acquaintance were bound; hard by I might discern a huge company of windmills, and bodies tied with ugly Snakes at every wing, turning round perpetually; a little further there were a great many broken by millstones, who were whirled with them perpetually about; in another place I might perceive black whirlpools full of tormented souls turning incessantly about: I asked what might be the reason of so many whirling tortures, my good Spirit answered, all these except Ixions wheel are new torments appointed for english Roundheads, who have destroyed from foundation to top, all Government both of Church and State; and as their brains turned round there, after every wind of doctrine, so their souls turn here in perpetual pains of rotation: A little further I sp●ed Prometheus removed thither from Caucasis, with a ravenous Vulture tearing and feeding upon his Liver, which as one part was eaten, renewed presently after, and abundance of new comers were tormented in the same manner, these I was  told were English men also that are punished like Prometheus, because as he is tortured so for stealing fire from heaven, so those fiery zealots of England would presumptuously prie into the secret, and Cabinet Counsels of God Almighty, and dive into those high points of Predestination, Election, and Reprobation, being not contented sapere ad sobrietatem, but expect ever and anon to have new lights and flashes of illuminations. Then came I to the bottomless tub which Danaus Daughters were a filling, a numberless company of other such tubs were there, and English women and men were incessantly labouring to fill them up with the stenchy black waters of Acheron: Those I was  told were those over-curious people in England which would be never satisfied with Christian Knowledge, and had no other devotion then to be always learning and never coming to the Truth, as these restless fillers never come to the bottom; Then I beholded the most horrid tortures of those Giants that would have thust jove out of heaven, and a world of English among them, who partaked of the same punishments, because they had conspired upon earth to dethrone their lawful King; Not far further I might espy glowing fiery tubs made Pulpit like, and I was  told they were prepared for those profane and presumptuous Mecanicks and other Lay men, who use to preach in London, and abuse the Sacred Oracles of God; and Vzza was not far off tormented there for being so bold with the ark; A little thereabouts I saw hoops of Iron were made Garter-like, of hot glowing steel, these I was  told were designed for those perjured Knights of St George in England, to wear upon their legs, when they come thither for breaking in the late war that solemn Oath they had taken at their instalement, to defend the honour and quarrels, the rights and dignities of their sovereign; A little distant I might see divers brass hoops glowing with fire, and they were scarfe-like, I was  told they were ordained for those Knights of the Bath to wear for ribbons next their skins when they came thither, for infringing that Sacred Oath they made at their Election, which was, To love their sovereign above all Earthly creatures, and for his right and dignity to live and die; A little beyond I saw a Copper Table, with chairs of the same, all candent hot, I was  told those were for perjured English privy Concellors, who had broke their Oath to the King, which they took to be true and faithful servants unto Him, and if they knew or understood any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against His Majesties Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity, they swore to let and withstand the same to the uttermost of their power, and cause it to be revealed, either to himself, or any other of his Privy council; Some few paces off I might descry a little round place like a Porters Lodgeat Court with a Fane on the top of it, where was a new kind of exquisite torment provided, but I could not discern it by reason of the smoke; for once a Secretary of State and his Son in England, who though they were of differing opinions in every thing else, yet jumped in this, to destroy their King and country; Hard by, I saw a little furnace so candent glowing hot that it looked of the colour of an emerald or Carbuncle, I was  told that was to clap in the Master of the Kings Jewell-house when he comes thither, for being so perfidious and so perjurious to his Master; I asked whether there were any other infernal tortures besides fire, yes I was answered, for to speak of fire to a people habituated to a could climb, were not only to make them to slight Hell, but to invite them to come to it; So my Spirit brought me Northward a little, and shew'd me a huge lough, where there were frosted mountaines up and down, and I might discover among them a world of Blewcaps lying in beds of Ice with their noses and toes nipped, the icesicles stuck to their fingers ends like horns, and a bl●ak his bid wind blew incessantly upon them, they made the most piteous noise that me thought I heard in all Hell; for they wawld, screechd, and howld ou● ever and anon this note, Wea is me, we a is me, that ever I betrayed my gid King.  
Among all these damned souls, I desired to see what punishment an Atheist had: my Spirit answered me, there were no atheists in Hell at all, they were so on earth before they came hither, and here they sensibly find and aclowledge there is a God by his Iustice and Iudgement: For there is here pana sensus, and paena damni; the outward torments you behold is not so grievous as the inferior regrets and agonies the souls have to have lost Heaven, whereof they were once capable, and to be eternally forsaken by their Creator; add hereunto that they know these torments to be endless, easeless, and remediless: Besides these qualities that are incident to the damned souls, t●ey have neither patience towards themselves in their own suffrances, nor pitty towards others, but their nature is so accursed, that they wish their neighbors torments to be greater then their own: Besides, their torments never lessen either by tract of time or degree of sense, but they persever always the same; they are still fresh, and the soul able to bear them. I saw that everlasting villain who committed the first Sacrilege we red of, by burning Dianas Temple, and his torments were as fresh and violent upon him as they were the first day he was thrown in thither; Iudas was in the same degree and strength of torture as the first moment he fell thither; jack Cade, Wat tiler, jack Straw, Kit the Tanner did fry there as fresh as they did that instant they were cast thither: Amongst whom it made my heart to melt within me to see some of their new-com'd countrymen amongst them, whereof I knew divers: And though Society useth to be some solace to men in misery, yet they conceived no comfort at all by these fresh companions.  
It is high time for us now said my good guiding angel to be gone to the other world, so we directed our course towards the Ferry upon Styx; Lord, what varities of lurid, and ugly squalid countenances did I behold as I passed! There was one sort of torment I had not seen before, there were divers that hung by their tongues upon posts up and down; I asked what they were, answer was made, that they were English Divines, and Lawyers, who against their Knowledge, as well as their Consciences, did seduce the ignorant people of England in the late Civill war. A little further I might see abundance of Committee-men and others, slopping up drops of molten led in lieu of French-barley broth, with a rabble of Apprentices sweeping the gutters of Hell, with brooms tufted with Addars and Snakes, because they resorting to the Wars, had thereby broken their Indentures with their Masters, and their Oaths of Supremacy to their Prince.  
Passing then along towards the Ferry, a world of hideous shapes presented themselves unto me; there I saw Corroding cares, panic fears, pining grief, lethargy, sleep, ugly rebellion, revengeful malice, snaky discord, and spiritual pride, the sin that first peopled Hell: Couches of Toads, Adders, and Scorpions in a corner hard by, I asked for whom they were prepared, I was answered, for some English Evangelizing, anabaptistical, and Legislative Ladies, which make writing of Notes at Sermons, and Religion a mere vail to cover their hypocrisy; So having me thought by a miraculous providence charmed Cerberus by pointing at him with the sign of the cross upon the fingers, we passed quietly by him, and being come to the Ferry, I found true what Pluto had said before, that there was a new English Tarpaulin entertained by Charon, but he was in a most cruel torture, for his body was covered thick all over with Pitch and tar, which burnt and flamed round about him: And here the Trance left me.  
Having thus come out of this sad swoon, I began by a serious recollection of myself to recall to my thoughts those dismal and dreadful objects that had appeared unto me; for though I was in Hell I did not taste of Lethe all the while, so that I did not forget any thing that I had seen; all things seemed to appear unto me so really, that if I had been of that opinion( whereof many have been) that Devills are nothing else but the ill affections, the exorbitant passions, and perturbances of the mind, it had been able to have convinced me. The Reader may easily imagine what apprehensions of horror these apparitions left in my brain: For as a River being by an inundation swelled out of her wonted channel leaves along the neighbouring meadows seggs and sands, and much riff-raff stuff behind her upon her return to her former bed; So did this Extasis, with that deluge of objects wherewith it overwhelmed my brain, leave behind it black suds, and ghastly thoughts within me, which have done me no hurt I thank God for it, it being a true rule that Malum cognitum facilius evitatur: And I wish they may produce the same effects in the Reader as they did in the Author. We find in the Sacred Oracles that Dives in his discourse from Hell with Abraham, wished that some body might be sent from the dead to inform and reclaim his Brothers upon earth, because the words of a dead man would gain more credit with them then any others. Let the Readers of this Trance make account that the Author was such a one; for he hath been butted many years, and so let it work within him accordingly.   
FINIS.   

Bella Scot-Anglica.  
A BRIEF OF ALL THE battles, and Martiall Encounters which have happened 'twixt ENGLAND and SCOTLAND, from all times to this present.  
Wherunto is annexed a Corollary, Declaring the causes whereby the Scot is come of late years to be so heightened in his spirits; With some Prophecies which are much cried up, as reflecting upon the fate of both Nations.  
Printed in the year 1648.   

Bella Scot-Anglica. A brief of all the Battels and Martiall Encounters, which have happened 'twixt England and Scotland, from all times to this present, &c.  

The Proeme.  
THe Design of this short Discourse, is to relate the Quarrels, and sundry traverses of war, which have passed from time to time between England and Scotland, Extracted out of the most approved and impartial Historians, as well Scottish, as English, French, and others.  
Out of which premises are deduced these Conclusions;  
First, That Scotland hath been always apt and forward to apprehended any occasion to invade and visit her Neighbour England.  
Secondly, That when she was at the highest pitch of strength, and had the greatest advantages against her, when she had active and martiall Kings for her Generalls, and the French for her firm Confederates, with other Coadjutors and Auxiliaries, she could never be a match no, not by many degree, for England, whether you respect the intrinsic power of the Country, or the innated prowess of the people: All which will clearly appear by the circumstances and success of divers battles and interchangeable Exploits which being indifferently balanced it will be found that if Scotland did sometimes beat England with the scabbard, England ●ay bee truly said to have beaten her more often with the blade.   

I Will not look back and take the ashes of antiquity so far, as to speak of the social war they entred into with the ancient Brittaines and Picts, against the English, when they began to take first firm footing in England. Nor, of that so famous battle 'twixt Athelstan and them, at which time they had a great Army of Danes joined with them; when being above twice more in number then the English, King Athelstan carried away a complete victory by a kind of backblow( Parthian-like) For the two Armies being ready to join, the English made semblance to fly away, leaving all their baggage behind, and much matter for booty, which as the Scots and Danes were sharing, the English suddenly wheeled about by the advantage of a woody hill, and finding them in disarray, and the Souldiers laden with pillage, they rushed upon them with that resolution, that above forty thousand of them fell, and as Buchanan their Prime Chronologer recordeth, the flower of their Nobility perished that day.  
But I intend not to involve my discourse in these misty times, but will take my rise from the Norman Conquest, for indeed the history of great britain being overclouded with so many incertainties, casteth but a dim light before those times, whereas since, she shines with such a lustre, that what stands upon Record may be asserted for clear and undeniable truth.  
At that time, I mean the time of the Conquest, Scotland did England a very good office by preserving the English blood-royall( which not long after returned to the crown in Henry the second) but it was casually▪ For Prince Edgar and his Mother, with his two Sisters, intending to go for denmark,( some say for hungary) and being by distress of weather driven upon the Scottish coasts, they were hospitably received by Malcoline, then King of Scotland; At which time civility with the English tongue took first footing in the Scottish Court, as the French did amongst the English.  

WILL. the second.  
THe first dart of War that was thrown 'twixt England and Scotland after the Conquest was in Will. Rufus his reign, when the Scots having made divers incursions into the English Pale, mowbray earl of Northumberland was sent against them, who encountering their King Malcoline with his eldest son in the field, they were both slain, and the whole Army overthrown. Afterwards the Scots choosing the dead Kings brother, King William went in person and deposed him, causing Edward the second, son of the slain King, to be crwoned, and making him to swear fealty and homage to England; But the Scots obtained the favour of King William, that neither English or Norman should bear any office of State in Scotland.   

King STEPHEN.  
KIng Stephen having obliged the Scots by many high favours, by giving Cumberland to David their King, and making his eldest son earl of huntingdon; Yet so ingratefull did they prove that they provoked him to sand Thurston then Archb. of york with such an Army, that meeting with the King himself in the head of his Forces, he utterly discomfited him, with the death of 10000. of his men.   

HENRY the second.  
HEnry the second, though the pulse of those times did ●eat high, and that he was distracted with a world of confusions, yet employing the York-shire Knights, Humphrey Vile; Scutvill and Vescy, they with their victorious arms took the Scots King in the field, and tendered him prisoner at Northampton, whence King Henry carried him along to attend him in his warres in France.   

RICHARD the first.  
RIchard cotur de Lion caused William King of Scotland to carry the Sword before him at his second Coronation at his return from the holy Land: At which time King Rich. passed a royal Charter, that whensoever the King of Scotland was summoned to the English Court the Bishop of Durham, and sheriff of Northumberland, should receive him at Tweeds, and accompany him to Teis, from Teis the Archbishop of york should attend him to the borders of that County, and so the Bish. and Sheriffs of other Counties, until he came to the English Court.   

King JOHN.  
King John one of the weakest Princes, and the most for●orne that ever England had considering how the Pope and all the world did bandy against him, and what fearful exigents he was reduced unto, yet finding Alexander the second then King of Scotland to give sanctuary to his fugitive clergy, and foment others against him, made an expedition thither himself, but the two armies being ready to buckle, the Scot seing fire and sword to gape upon him, submitted himself, and subscribed to such terms as the Conqueror propounded.   

EDWARD the First.  
NOw come I to the scourge, or, as his tomb in Westminster tells me, the hammer of the Scotts-men.  Edwardus primus Scotorum malleus hic est. 
He causeth balliol to come to Newcastle to swear Fealty and homage to him, who after flying to the French King, Edward was so nettled for this his defection, that though he had a far greater arrand in France, yet he choose rather to employ edmond earl of Lancaster thither, and to march himself to Scotland in the front of a puissant army; where the Scots in far greater numbers shewed their teeth only but durst not bite. King Edward summons balliol to Berwicke when he resubmitted himself with all the Nobles in open Parliament which he held there; And for caution brought the King himself along with him, leaving the earl of Surrey Warden of Scotland.  
Not long after the Scots revolted again notwithstanding their King was in England, having one walls for their ringleader, who did much mischief on the frontiers. And their insolency grew to that hight, that besides their inroads, they began to rhyme upon him.  
What this Edward with his long shanks? But he payed them for their saddening with a vengeance; He goeth again in person and at Fonkirk battle killed out right 200. of their Nobles and Gentry, with 40. thousand common Souldiers.  
Then he summons a Parliament at edinburgh where all the Nobles swear him fealty again; He carrieth away the Ragman roll, the black cross, and the ston wherein they say the fate of their kingdom is fixed.  
Then was there offered a third provocation, when le Bruce was crwoned King of Scotland.  
The earl of pembroke was sent against him, who utterly defeated him at johnston.  
Hereupon le Bruce flieth to the Popes pantofle making him Lord Paramount of Scotland, which moved King Edward, notwithstanding the menaces and fulminations of the Pope who wished him to forbear the Scots( because they were an exempt nation belonging to the Roman chapel) to make a fourth expedition thither where he constrained le Bruce to fly to Norway, where he blew on his nails while K. Edward lived. And so eager was this great King in pursuit of this action, that falling sickly upon the way, He said If I die before I enter Scotland, I charge you to go on courageously. and carry my body round about the Country; but it pleased God to reprieve him until he had done his business himself.   

EDWARD the second.  
BUt here comes a cooling-card for the English, Edward the second whose greatest honor was to be son to a Peerles ●ather, and father to an incomparable son, Rosa spinam, spina rosam genuit. In his time all went to wrack especially in Scotland. At Bannocks battle Gilbert de clear earl of gloucester, and 40 Barons more, with 700 Knights and Gentlemen; and as some stories record above 40000. more were slain. Which defeat was imputed principally to the ill choice of ground the English had taken. The Scots had behind them rocks, hills, and woods to fly into if necessity required, before them loughs, and moores, that the assailant could not march further. add hereunto the pusillanimity of the King( and the spirits of men are much raised by their leader) who was said to fly first: and better it is for a lion to led sheep, then for a sheep to led a company of lions.  
The Scots hereupon were so agog that they enter Ireland with an Army under the conduct of Edward Bruce the Kings brother, who landing at Karig Fergus ransacked all the North parts, where he took such firm footing, that he proclaym'd himself King of Ireland, though he had onely overranne Ulster. At which time there was such a direful famine, that in some places of Ireland dead bodies were digged up, and their flesh boiled in their skulls to be eaten, as the story tells.  
But two yeares after, Sir jo. Bremingham then chief Justice, with the Archbishop of Armagh, went with such a power against this upstart King, that at Dundalke they got a most complete victory, one Manpas as it seemed having killed the King hand to hand, for both their dead bodies were found together, and Manpas covering the Kings body.  
In England another Army was sent against the Scots, called the york Army, which was also overthrown at Milton upon Swayle. nevertheless the King would venture once more in Person, and with a numerous Army invaded Scotland; The Scots fly into the woods, and places of fastness; And for want of provision in that hungry country, the English were forced to retire, but in the retreat they were so pursued that they lost all their ammunition, which was attributed to the treason of Sir Andrew Harkley. But your critical Annalists ascribe it to the poverty of spirit in the royal head, who being become hateful to God, and man, first for perjury, by infringing the oath he made to his Barons; then by disobedience to his father who in his death bed charged him upon his blessing to abandon peers Gaveston, whom nevertheless he still doted upon with the Spencers, by whose counsels he guided himself, And it was always seen that Princes of an ill destiny follow the worst counsels.   

EDWARD the third.  
BUt here comes a spirit who will soundly vindicate his fathers affronts. Edward the third, a Prince that was the soonest a man, and the longest that lasted so of any in the whole catalogue of English Kings; yet being but young when the Diadem first begird his temples, after an encounter at Stanhope Park, where great multitudes of Scots appeared, but vanished away like meteors, skulking in woods and mountains.  
In the Parliament held at Northampton, the King of Scotland was released of his homage; But some years after, when the young King began to understand himself, he sent an army with balliol, whom he caused to be crwoned at Scone; And afterwards there was a battle fought at Hallidowne, where the English made the Scots a bridge of gold to fly over, for they betook themselves all to their heels.  
King balliol being thus restored, Scotland became feuditary to England again.  
But a few years after king Ed. being deeply engaged in his French wars, and thinking Hoc agere, the Scots presuming his absence would prove advantageous to them, make cursorie sallies out of Scotland, and plunder all before them in the North, by the instigation of the French.  
But the Queen and the Lords of the North make such a levy of Martiall forces, that they entred Scotland like thunder, and at a mighty battle one Copland takes the King prisoner, whom, pleading the law of arms he would not deliver the Queen, until the King had sent order from France.  
This overthrow was given upon Saturday, and upon Saturday six weeks before the battle of Cressy had been fought, with another against the Duke of britain; in all which king Edward proved victorious. And being triumphantly return'd from France, with the Flower-de-luces upon his sword, and redoubted now by all the Princes of the Christian world having a triumverate of kings his prisoners, one would think the Scot would have been quiet, but they still provoked him so far, that in the dead of Winter( and King Ed. was a Prince for all weathers) he went thither in Person himself, took Berwick, and had all Scotland resigned unto him, by the King himself, and the Nobles who jointly swore fealty and homage to him.   

RICHARD the second.  
NOw the grandchild of this great King( who turned the wheel of his times every where up and down the Christian world as he pleased) mounts the stage. The Scots begin to infest the borders, and do other acts of hostility being actually assisted by the French king, who sent thither his admiral with a 1000. men at arms, and 60. sail with furniture to arm 12000. men more.  
King Richard musters up an Army worthy of a King, and rusheth into Scotland like a whirlwind as far as Dondee, and neither Scot or French appeared to make opposition.  
The Scots( as the French annales say) not symbolizing with the humour of the French grew weary of them, and cashiered them, but they kept Jean de Viene, the great admiral prisoner in a manner, until the French king had payed his ransom, which he did, otherwise his admiral might have lain at dead anchor there all his life-time.  
But being returned to France, lest he should seem to show no fruits at all of his voyage, he informs the King, that he had pried into the uttermost intrinsic strength, both of Scotland and England, and found that Scotland was able to put in the field about 30000 men, and 5000. horse, and England 60000. 
Charles the 6. of France, called le phrentique.  foot, and 8000. horse, This relation induced Charles the frantic to attempt the invasion of England the year following, with a formidable Army, and Fleet, which was to make sail from the sluice, and for Land-forces far exceeded the invincible Armada of the year 88. But the Admirals account was found false, and to have reckoned much without his host, for as the French Historians report, King Richard had levied near upon 100000. Foot and 20000. Horse.   

HENRY the fourth.  
IN Hen. the fourth's time the tumultuous Scot stirs again, and pilfers about the Marches at last he composeth the body of an Army, whom Hen. Hotspurre encountered, and killed more enemies then he had men in his own Army.  
Sir Robert Umphreyvile being Vice-Admirall, takes 14. great ships laden with corn, together with the great Galeon of Scotland, hard by lithe, which so abated the price of corn, that he was commonly called Sir Rob. Mend-market.  
A little after the young Prince of Wales hurled himself seven daies march into Scotland, and did what he would.   

HENRY the fift.  
HEnry the fift that man of men, and mirror of chivalrie( and the strangest Convert that ever was) being come to the Crown, he falls like a Politician to work in erecting Forts on the frontiers of Scotland, which he did without control.  
After he took the young King James the first prisoner, in a very hot encounter, and carried him up and down with him in the French warres.   

HENRY the sixth.  
HEnry the sixth for some gallant parts in the aforesaid young King James the first of Scotland married him to the Lady jane, Daughter to the earl of Somerset his niece; But he proved afterwards hatefully ingratefull, and persidious to King Henry, b●nding all his main forces against him but he was shamefully repelled and beaten by Sir Ralph Gray, and the Knights of the North.   

EDWARD the fourth.  
ANd no less i● grateful and treacherous was james the third in Edward the fourths time, who desiring in marriage Cicilia the Kings daughter, it was condescended unto so far that he had part of her portion advanced him; yet he fell to acts of hostility and frames an Army, which the Duke of gloucester with 15000 men ill favourdly beat( though they were twice more in number) and got Berwicke again.   

HENRY the seventh.  
NOw come I to that great Magus of his dayes Henry the seventh who was said to be hanted with walking spirits Simuell warbeck, and Perkins, whom he chased away by sprinkling of blood.  
The Scots entertained warbeck, t●ough they knew him to be an Impostor, and raised an Army for him.  
The earl of Surry and Bishop fox, were sent against it, who drive the King and warbeck with the whole Army before them six dayes march into the Country, at last the Scots King sent a defiance for a battle, which being to be fought the next day, the Scot steals away the night before in a silent march.  
Hereupon a Peace was concluded, provided that warbeck should bee banished Scotland whom notwithstanding they furnished with ships, to go to try his fortune with the Cornish Rebels.   

HENRY the eight.  
ANd now come I to the glory of his dayes( especially two thirds of them) Henry the 8. for never did Prince rise with a greater lustre in Englands hemisphere, and set in a darker cloud. And being extremely busied in the warres of France, who should disturb him but his own brothervin-law, james the fourth, excited by the French, who contributed great sums of money towards the support of the war; The King sends presently from France to the earl of Surry to make head against them; At first the earl sent Sir William Bullmer with 200. Archers upon the borders to observe their motion.  
The Lord Humes, entereth with 8000. men and as he thought to return with his booty, Sir William Bulmer having reinforced his 200. to 1000. fell upon the 8000. Scots, with that fury, that he ki●d 500. took so many prisoners, and intercepted the whole booty. This made the young Kings blood boil within him for revenge, and composing a royal Army of the utmost strength of Scotland went in the head thereof himself.  
The earl of Surry was not idle, but raised an Army of 26000 men, and his son then admiral came to him from Newcastle with 1000. old Sea souldiers. The two Amies met in Flodden, where after many hot encounters victory fluttered a long while with doubtful wings, at last the King himself, with the Archb. of St. Andrews his brother, were slain, with 12. earls, and 14. barons, and 12000 Gentlemen and others and there fell of the English but 1500. only, nor could the Scots rescue the body of their King, but to mend the matter a little, gave out it was not the Kings body, but one Elfinston attired like to him, to encourage the Army.  
But afterwards, though they acknowledged it was his body, yet would not Henry the 8, permit him to have the due rites of Princely burial, because he had so perjuriousl● violated his faith with him.  
Some few years after the Duke of Albany raised an Army, but he was prevented to do any hurt by the Lord Roos and Dacres, who made bonfires of above 80. Villages without seeing the face of an enemy, No sooner were they returned, but news came, that the Duke of Albany had by this time in perfect equipage an Army of 30000. men.  
Hereupon the Lord Treasurer and admiral, were sent to find him out, but both Armies being come to sight of each other, the Scots not enduring well the countenance of the English Forces, ran away and shamefully disbanded. so that if the Lord general had had then commissio● ample enough, they might have given a fatal blow to Scotland, as they themselves con●essed, but by the intercession of the Queen Dowager, Hen. the eights sister, they obtained truce.  
After this King Hen. condescended to meet james the fift at York but he failed, sending certain Commissioners, and so cunning was the Scot, that their Commission, and private instructions looked two ways, and as they were treating, tidings came, that the Scots had rushed into, and rifled the Marches most barbarously.  
Hereupon the Earl of norfolk was sent with 20000. men, who for 8. daies did what he would within the bowels of the Country.  
Anothor Army was sent under the Command of the Lord Dacres and Wharton, who gave them such a mortal blow, that eight Earls were taken prisoners, and 200. Gentlemen and 800. more, and the stories concur, that there was scarce a soldier, but had at least his two prisoners, this was Solmemosse battle.  
Yet for all this such is the inc●ination of the English to bee at peace with their neighbours, that a match was concluded, and ratified by act of Parliament, with a special instrument under the Scots Noble-mens hands between Prince Edward, and the young Queen Mary, yet by the cunning negotiation of the French, the Scot fell off. Hereupon old king Henry, who could digest no indignities, sent 200. ships laden with souldiers to the Frith, under the Earl of Hereford, who marched as far as Edinburgh, burnt the town, and part of the castle, returning with revenge and rich booty. A while after the Scots understanding the King was gone to France, thought to serve themselves of that advantage, and to fall upon the borders, but the Earl of Hereford repelled them,   

EDWARD the sixth.  
EDward the sixth, though yet in his minority, seemed to be sensible of the affront the Scot had put upon him for a wife, though his Father had vindicated it pretty well, but as the case stood, nothing could concern England more, then to hinder that the French of any in the world should have her.  
And now am I come to the last true battle that was fought 'twixt England and Scotland since the Conquest. The Duke of somerset was appointed general, the earl of Warwicke his Lieutenant general, the Lord Clinton admiral had 60. ships of war, which were to hold course with the Land-forces. So from berwick, with a sober Army they entred Scotland, ●onsisting of about 13000. foot and 1200. men at arms, 2500. light horse, 16. pieces of Ordnance, every piece having a guard of Pioners who came in all to 1400. They had marched as far as Musselborough, far within the Country, and with infinite pains did they surmount the natural and artificial difficulties of the ways, three small Castles they seized upon in their march without offering any act of violence to small or great.  
They understood the Regent of Scotland did far exceed them in number, and there came Recruits hourly to him, ●or the fire cross was carried about by the Heralds through all parts, which is two firebrands upon the point of a Spear, that all above 16. and under 60 should resort to the general rendezvous so that the Historians on both sides leave the number of them indefinite to this day, but they all agree, that they were at least twice as many and they had twice as many Ordnance, yet notwithstanding many other advantages it pleased God to give the English a complete victory( and victories are the decrees of Heaven when there is no tribunal on earth to de●ermine the quarrel. This happened precisely the same day that Flodden field battle was fought 34. years before. There were 14000. slain out-right, whereof there were 3000. herdmen; friars and Monks, above 1500. taken prisoners, whereof young Huntly, and other great Lords were of the number; the spoils of the field 30000 jacks. and 30. pieces of Ordnance were shipped for England, and the English plundered the Country up and down 5. daies march further.  
To these exploits at home may be added a smart blow the English gave the Scots in Ireland in Sir jo. Perrots government, for some 2000. Redshanks being come over by the Burks means, like a swarm of caterpillars they proll'd and peeled up and down, Sir Ri. Bingham then governor of Connaught made head against them, with a small contemptible number, and at the river of Earn● near Sleg●, slay them all out-right so that not one soul escaped, to return ●o Scotland with news what became of the rest.  
Touching these late traverses of war 'twixt England and Scotland 'tis true that infortunate England hath drawn upon her ●elfe a great deal of dishonour in the opinion of the world abroad specially among those who understand not the true carriage of things; For these late rushings in of the Scot cannot be so properly called invasions a invitations, by some spurious and most unworthy degenero●s E●g●●shmen, who from a long time had plotted the bringing of them in, and it was the most pernicious and basest treason that ever was practised against poor England: But to give a fu●l and ●atisfactory relation of this war, I will deduce the busine● from the beginning.  
Before this un●ucky storm fell twixt England and Scotland there were certain clouds issuing from the vapours of divers discontented brains, p●ainly discerned to hover up and down a long time in both Ki●gdomes specially in that northern Region: The first which appeared was, when some yeers after his Majesties access to the crown, there was an act of revocation passed, where some things which had insensibly slipped away from the crown, and other things which were illegally snatched from the church were resumed, and reannex'd to both; which lighting upon some of the great ones, they were over heard to murmur though this was done with as much moderation as possibly could be and by the mature advice of the counsel of state there, with the free opinion of the approved'st Lawyers of that kingdom, and from hence issued the first symptom o● discontentment.  
Not long after his Majesty being informed of the mean and servile condition of the Ministers of that kingdom, which have the charge of the conscience, and service of God, and make up a considerable part of the free born subjects; his Majesty understanding what poor pittances they received for their subsistence, and for those small stipends also, or rather alms of benevolence, they depended upon the pleasure of the Laiks, His Majesty by a special Commission to that end found away to augment and acertain that allowance, and free them from that slavish kind of clientele and dependency they had upon the seculars; Whence may bee inserr'd what monsters of ingratitude those men shew'd themselves to be afterwards, by exasperating and poisoning the hearts of the people against their sovereign in their virulent and seditious preachments, and inviting them to arms. Not long after, when the poor husbandman and owners of corn were bound to pay tithes to lay persons called there the Lords of the erection, were much incommodated by them, be cause they could not take in their corn till the person had fetched away his tithe, who sometimes to show his power or spleen peradventure would defer of purpose the taking in thereof, whereby the whole crop, by not taking advantage of the weather, would oftimes suffer: His Majesty for the redress of this grievance, appointed Commissioners who found a way to purchase those tithes, and bring the impropriators to take a pecuniary certain rent counterveylable unto them: Hereupon the lay Lords and Gentlemen finding that the respect and dependency whereby the Ministers and owners of corn were formerly oblige, d unto them to be hereby lessened did tacitly discover much animosity and displeasure: Moreover his majesty when he went thither to be crowned having conferred honours upon some whom he had found industrious to promote his service, envy( which is always the canker of honour) began to reign among divers of them which did turn v●sibly afterwards to discontentments.  
These were the concealed and private grounds, now the open and avowed causes were the introduction of our Liturgy, the book of Canons, Ordination and Consecration with the high Commission Court among them: and it hath been found since that those things were introduced by the cunning of those discontented spirits, that thereby there m●ght be some grounds to suscitat the people to rise, which plot of theirs took effect.  
add hereunto that after the King of Swed●ns death divers Scots Commanders came over, and made a flourish in our English Court, but being Souldiers of fortune, and finding no trading here, they went to Scotland and joined counsels wi h those discontented spirits to beget a war that they might be in action.  
The only pretence they took for their rising then, was our Common Prayer book, hereupon his Majesty sent a Proclamation to be published wherein he declared that 'twas not his purpose to press the practise of that book upon any ones conscience, therefore he was willing to discharge them from the use and exercise of it, and to abolish all acts tha● tended to that end and that all things should be in statu quo prius. But this would not suffice, for they went on to fish in these troubled waters, having a design to drayne all the episcopal sees in the kingdom, and turn them to laic land: Hereupon they entred into a holy league which they ter●'d Covenant, without his Majesties privity, and th●s was point blank against an Act of Parliament 1585. which utterly prohibits all leagues, covenants or bands whatsoever without the Kings consent: Hereupon the body of an Army was ●aised, and one L●sley was made general, so they ma●ched to D●●●● Hill within five miles of Berwicke  
Where the rendezvouz was: They gave out they came with a petition to his Majesty, though they brought it upon the pikes point. There were many noble English hearts which swelled high at this insolency of the Scot, and therefore went with wonderful alacrity to attend his Majesty to Berwick, but there were others who were lukewarm in the business, and those of the greatest Ones, which the Scots knew well enough, for there was nothing trans-acted or said in the Kings Cabinet counsel or Bed-chamber, but there was intelligence given them: Hereupon a pacification was shuffled up, and so both the armies were dispersed. The King being returned to London, grew more and more sensible of these indignities of his Subjects of Scotland, and having called a Parliament expressly for that purpose in England, some of the chief Members thereof were so intoxicated by the Scot, that they did not only not resent this bravado he had done to England, but seemed to approve of his actions. His Majesty finding the pulse of his Parliament beat so faintly for enabling him to vindicate these indignities upon the Scot, dissolved it, and proposed the business to his privy counsel, who not only advised him, but supplied him with noble sums to repair his honour by War; hereupon the former Forces were rallied, and made up into the body of an Army: The Scot was not idle all this while, but reunited his former Army, whereof there was a good part undisbanded( contrary to Article) and choosing rather to make another Country the theatre of the War then his own, he got over the Tweed, and found all passages open, and as it were made for him al the way till he came to the Tine,& though there were considerable troops of Horse and Foot at Newcastle, yet they never offered as much as to face him all the way; at Ne●burg there was a small dispute, but the English Infantry would not fight, so Newcastle gates flew open to her inveterate Enemy, without any resistance at all, where he had more friends than Foes, and the English General rather then to be put to unworthy compositions retired in disorder: Whither this happened either by secret faction, or want of affection in in the soldier, or by the faults of the general, I will not determine; but sure I am it was dishonourable enough to poor England, who was bought and sold in this expedition. This was the first entrance the Scot made into England since these unhappy Wars; but this invitation was private, the last was public, being voted by the English Commons, and they rushed in, in the dead of Winter; notwithstanding that his Majesty had taken a toilsome journey not long before to sit amongst them himself in Parliament, where he condescended to every thing they could imaginably desire, and they acknowledging his unparalleled Grace, desired that Act to be revived whereby it was Treason in the highest degree that could be, for any of the Subjects of Scotland of what degree or condition soever to levy any Mlitary Forces without his Majesties express Commission, and this they did to express their gratitude: as they said. But the year came scarce about before they had moulded another Army, not only without, but expressly against his royal Commission, and Counter-command, and would intrude themselves to be umpires twixt him and his English Subjects whither he would or no; so in they rushed again in dead of Winter, and for Martiall exploits, the little credit they got by storming of Newcastle was nothing countervaylable to that which they lost before Hereford, where the Welsh-men banged them to some purpose from before the town, and made their general to truss up his pack and away, sending him a fat Sow with Pigs after her, and a blew bonnet upon her head for his break-fast.     

corollary.  
THus have I run over, and faithful related by collation of many Authors, with their concurrent testimonies, those traverses of war which have passed betwixt the English and Scots since the Conquest, having omitted many circumstances which might have tended further to the glory of England, to avoid prolixity, for I intended at first that this Discourse should be like a skein of silk wound up close upon a small bottom, which a freer hand might put upon the loom and draw to a large piece.  
Any man of a clear and unpassionate judgement will hence infer that the Scots have been always far inferior to the English( except in these latter unlucky Invasions) in point of true prowess, and National Power: In some examples you may find how the English carried away more Captives then they were Souldiers of themselves, driving them as sheep before them; most of the battles they fought were in Scotland herself, when the English had been tired with long marches, over uncouth, and strange places, being ignorant of the advenues, and advantages of them.  
Indeed in Edward the Seconds reign they got three battles, and one at the fag end of Hen. the 8. wherein Sir Ralph Evers was slain, but it was more by stratagem than strength, and besides the English might have been said to have fought rather against the Heaven and Elements then men, having Wind and Sun in their faces, but that might have been termed more properly a petty defeat then Victory, for there fell not above 200. But what use did the Scot ever make of those Victories, though the North parts have many places of fastness, and tenable, yet I read not of any place they kept except Barwick; all the rest of their Warres were but tumultuary sallies, and predatory devastations, and pilfrings. But the English have taken four of their Kings captives, killed two of them in the Field, carried away their Crown( which they give out to be greater and more weighty than that of England) their Ragman-Roll, the black cross, with other instruments of sovereignty, and did sundry acts equivalent to a Conquest. They pierced the very heart of the kingdom, and the Scot may be said to have onely trod upon England to, for they never came farther than the Walls of york, till the reign of this thing that calls itself Parliament. But if one should ask me why the English having made such firm Invasions from time to time into the very bowels of Scotland, did not reduce it to a vassalage and perfect provincial obedience, as well as to make their Kings fuedetary in which state they continued towards England near upon five hundred yeares?  
My Answer shall be the same that Suetonius gives in behalf of the Romans, who notwithstanding they lorded, over the rest of Brittany four hundred and odd yeares, yet they never went about to conquer Scotland, because they knew the prise would not have countervail'd the pains, by reason of the cragginesse of the country and incommodity of habitation, therefore they thought it enough that Adrians Wall which extended from Tinmouth to Solway Frith, near upon fourscore miles should be the western Bounds of their Empire.  
Out of the precedent Examples we may also gather, that the Scot hath been always of a genius apt and forward to stir against England upon any the least occasion. For of those five and twenty Kings and Queens that have been since the Conquest, onely five have been free of their insolences: yet did England never begin with them till she was justly provoked thereunto, nor could Alliances nor Leagues, or any ties of Treaty confirmed by solemn oaths( which are those religious Bonds that pass 'twixt God and the Soul) detain the Scotish Kings from puzzling and disturbing England, when her Kings were most distracted in Warres with France, and the better half of her strength employed abroad, so that the Scots may be said to have been from time to time as goads in Englands sides, or a thorn in her to; and France leaguing merely for his own advantage with them, may be said to have made use of Scotland as the Fox did of the Cats foot to pull the Apple out of the Fire for his own eating: yet for all these eager and irrefragable Combinations 'twixt the French and Her against England, England ever bore up, and made her party good, and that in a victorious way against both, and for Scotland she may be said to have given Her blows for phillips.  
But it seems that Italian was well versed in the Scotishmens humours, who understanding of the late union between the two kingdoms, said that England had got no great catch by the addition of Scotland, she had onely got a wolf by the ears, who must be held very fast, else he will run away to France.  
Some there are who much magnify and cry up the Scots of late yeares, for great Souldiers, tacitly derogating thereby from the English, as if they should stand in some apprehension of fear of them; but I cannot imagine upon what grounds they should do it; true it is, that since the Revolt of the Hollander, and these seventy yeares Tumults in the Netherlands, some of them are much improved in the Art of war, and knowledge of arms from what they were; they have also pushed on their Fortunes in the Warres of denmark, Sweden, Russia, Germany, and France; for Poland, their Profession there is to truss packs rather than trail Pikes. By reason of the quality of the soil and climb they have tough and hardy bodies, and it may add to their courage that they venture for a better country, in regard they cannot go to a worse than their own. Now it must be granted that the greatest advantage wherewith Nature doth recompense a mountainous and sterile soil above a luxurious and easy, is, to make it produce suffering bodies; which made the Romans and nine-score yeares conquering of Spain, when they were but nine conquering of France.  
For the first, 'tis answered, that if the Scot hath made sallies abroad into other Countries of late yeares, the English also have done the like, and are in some places in greater nu●bers, as in the Low-countries, where at this day they triple the number of the Scots, so that the Netherlands may be said to be a Military Yard for the English as well: and he that is never so little versed in the modern Stories will find that the Foundation of that State hath been chiefly cimented with English blood.  
For the east-country, 'tis true, there are many able Scots Leaders, and there are also many English of abilities and famed.  
To the second, if the Scots are a hardy People because of their cragges and mountaines: I answer that the welsh and Cornish with them that dwell about the northern Alpes in England, are as mountainous as they, and I believe have as suffering and sturdy bodies; which makes the world yield it for a maxim, that no Prince of Christendom hath a better choice to make Souldiers of than the King of Great Britain.  
I will conclude with certain Prophesies the Scots do much speak of. The first is out of Polychronicon, whe●e the author Ranulphus Cistrensis relates the words of a certain Anchorite who lived in King Egelbert his time, now near upon 900. yeares ago, and the words are these, Angli, quia proditioni, ebrietati,& negligentia domus Dei dediti sunt, primùm per Danos, deinde per Normanos tertiùm per Scotos, quos vilissimos habent, conterentur: varium erit saeculum,& varietas mentium, designabitur varietate vestium. 1. The English●en for that they wonneth themselves to treason, to drunkenness, and wretchlesnesse of Gods House; first by the Danes, then by the Normans, and lastly by the Scots, whom they holden least in esteem, shallen be overthrown, 'twill be an instable Age, and the variableness of mens mindes shall appear by the variableness of their vestments.  
The Danish and Norman Conquest have happened since, and the third is to follow in the same manner, say they, not by Succession, but by the Sword.  
2 The second are those Prophesies of Merlin, who much tampers with the single Lion, and of the Feats that he should do, which they say, is meant of their Lion within a double Treasure Rampant, Mars counterflowred.  
3. Then come they to the ston wherein they say, the Fortune of their Kingdom is fixed, which hath lain in Westminster, now near upon five hundred yeares.  

Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum  
Invenient Lapidem regnare tenentur ibidem.   

If Fate sails not, the Scots, where ere they find  
This ston, there they shall reign and rule mankind.   
Which they interpret also must be by the Sword not by Succession.  
4. Then do they apply to themselves a prophesy that the Irish have very frequent amongst them, which is, That the day will come, when the Irish shall weep over the Engl●shmens graves.  
5. Lastly, that which is so common in the English mens mouths,[ lincoln was, London is, and york shall be] which they say, shall be at last the Seat of the British Empire, to be erected there by them.  
But I am none of those that afford much faith to rambling Prophesies, but will conclude with a late much cried up Wise-man,( Sir W. R) that Prophesies are as seeds sown in the vast field of time, whereof not one grain of a thousandcomes to grow up: yet these Prophesies may serve as so many Prospectives for England, to behold, though a far off in a mist, the danger and destiny which may befall her, from this growing Nation if not timely prevented.  
6. Hereunto may be added another very old and il-favoured one, which shall fore run her fall.  

Gens tua te prodit, proh Anglia, Scotia rodit.   

— O England,  
Thine own People thee betray,  
And Scotland makes of thee a prey.   
FINIS.   

THE VOTE, OR A poem royal, PRESENTED TO HIS majesty for a New-yeares-Gift.  
By way of Discourse 'twixt the Poet, and his Muse.  
Calendis Januariis 1642.  
LONDON, Printed by T. Badger, for Humphrey Mosley, at the Princes arms, in Paules Church-yard, 1642.   

POEMA {αβγδ}.  

THe world's bright Eye, Times measurer, begun  
Through watery capricorn his course to run,  
Old Ianus hastened on, his temples bovnd  
With Ivy, his gray hairs with holly crowned;  
When in a serious quest, my thoughts did muse,  
What Gift, as best becoming, I should choose,  
To Britaines Monarch( my dread sovereign) bring  
Which might supply a shores offering.  
I rummag'd all my stores, and searched my cells  
Where nought appeared, god wot, but bagatells:  
No far fetched Indian gem, cut out of rock,  
Or fishd in shells were trusted under lock,  
No piece which Angelo's strong fancy hit,  
Or Titians pencil, or rare Hyliards wit,  
No Ermines, or black-sables, no such skins,  
As the grim Tartar hunts, or takes in gins:  
No Medails, or rich stuff of Tyrian die,  
No costly Boules of frosted argentry,  
No curious Land-skip, or some Marble piece  
digged up in Delphos, or else-where in Greece,  
No Roman Perfumes, Buffs, or Cordouans  
Made drunk with Ambar by Moreno's hands,  
No arras, or rich carpets freighted o'er  
The surging Seas from Asia's doubtful shore,  
No Lions cub, or beast of strange aspect,  
Which in Numidia's fiery womb had slept,  
No old Toledo blades, or Damaskins,  
No Pistols, or some rare-spring'd Carrabins,  
No Spanish Ginet, or choice stallion sent,  
From Naples, or hot Afrique's continent,   

In fine, I nothing found, I could descry  
Worthy the hands of Caesar or his eye.   

My wits were at a stand, when, lo, my Muse  
( None of the choir, but such as they do use  
For laundresses or handmaids of mean rank  
J knew sometimes on Po and Isis banks)  
Did softly buzz.   Muse. 
Then let me something bring,  
My handsel the New-yeare to CHARLES my King,  
May usher in bifronted Ianus—  Poet. 
Thou fond foolhardy Muse, thou silly Thing,  
Which 'mongst the shrubbs& reeds dost use to sing,  
darest thou perk up, and the tall Cedar climb,  
And venture on a King with jingling rhyme?  
Though all thy words were pearl, thy letters gold,  
And cut in rubies, or cast in a mould  
Of diamonds, yet still thy lines would be  
To mean a gift for such a majesty.  Muse. 

I'll try; and hope to pass without disdain  
in New-yeares-gifts the mind stands for the main,  
The Sophy, finding 'twas well meant, did deign  
Few drops of running water from a swain,  
Then sure 'twill please my Liege, if J him bring,  
Some gentle drops from the Castalian spring.  
Though Rarities J want of such account,  
Yet have J some thing on the forked mount.  
Nor ist the first, or third access J made  
To Caesar's feet, and thence departed glad.  
For as the Sun with his male heat doth render  
Nile's muddy slime fruitful, and apt t'engender,  
And daily to produce new kinds of creatures  
Of various shapes, and thousand differing features,  
So is my fancy quickened by the glance  
Of His benign aspect and countenance,  
It makes me pregnant, and to superfaete,  
Such is the vigour of His beams and heat.   

Once in a vocal foreste I did sing,  
And made the oak to stand for CHARLES my King,  
The best of trees, whereof( it is no vaunt  
The greatest schools of Europe ring and chant)  
There you shall also find Dame ARHETINE,  
Great Henries daughter, and Great Britaines queen,  
Her name engraven in a laurel three,  
And so transmitted to Eternity.  
For now I hear that Grove speake's besides mine,  
The language of the Loire, the Po, and Rhyne,  
( And to my Prince( my sweet Black Prince) of late,  
I did a youthful subject dedicate.)  
Nor do I doubt but that in time, my Trees  
Will yield me fruit to pay Apollo's fees,  
To offer up whole hecatombs of praise  
To Caesar, if on me he cast his rays.  
And if my lamp have oil, I may compile  
The modern Annals of great Albion's Isle,  
To vindicat the truth of CHARLES his reign,  
From scribbling Pamphletors, who story stain  
With loose imperfect passages, and thrust  
Lame things upon the world, t'ane up in trust.   

I have had Audience( in another strain)  
Of Europes greatest Kings, when German main  
And the Cantabrian waves I crossd, J drank  
Of Tagus, Seine, and sate at Tybers bank,  
Through Scylla& Charybdis I have steerd,  
Where restless Aetna, belching flames, appeerd,  
By Greece, once Palla's garden, then J passt,  
Now all ore spread with Jgnorance and wast.  
Nor hath faire Europe her vast bounds throughout  
An Academe of note J found not out.   

But now J hope in a successful prore,  
The Fates have fixed me on sweet Englands shore,  
And by these various wanderings true J found,  
Earth is the common Mother, every ground  
May be one's country, for by birth each man  
Is in this World a Cosmopolitan  
A freeborn burgess, and receives thereby  
His denization from Nativity:  
Nor is this World, at best, but a huge Inn,  
And men the rambling passengers, wherein  
Some warm lodgings find,& that as soon  
As out of Nature's closerts they see no one,  
And find the table ready laid; but some  
Must for their commons trudg, and shift for room:  
With easy place some climb Promotions Hill,  
Some in the Dale, do what they can, stick still.  
Some through false glasses smiling Fortune spy,  
Who still keeps off, though she appears hard by:  
Some like the Ostrich, with their wings do flutter,  
But cannot fly, or soare above the gutter,  
Some quickly fetch and double Good-Hopes scape,  
Some ne're can do'tthough the same course they shape:  
So that poor mortals are so many balls  
Tossd, some o'er line, some under Fortune's walls.   

And it is Heavens high pleasure Man should lie  
Obnoxious to this partiality,  
That by Industrious ways he should contend,  
Nature's short pittance to improve and mend.  
And Industry ne're failed, at last, t'advance  
Her patient sons above the reach of Chance.   Poet. 

But whither rov'st thou thus?  
Well; since I see thou art so strongly bent,  
And of a gracious look so confident,  
Go, and throw down thyself at Caesars feet,  
And in thy best attire thy sovereign greet,  
Go, An auspicious and most blissful year,  
Wish Him, as e're shined o'er this hemisphere,  
Good may the Entrance, better the middle be,  
And the Conclusion best of all the three,  
Of joy ungrudg'd may each day be a debtor,  
And evry morn still usher in a better,  
May the soft gliding Nones and evry Ide,  
With all the Calends stil some good betid,  
May Cynthia with kind looks,& Phoebus's rays,  
One clear his Nigh●s, the other guild his dayes.  
Free limbs, unphysick'd health, due appetite,  
Which no sauce else but Hunger may excite,  
Sound sleeps, and sanguine dreams, which represent,  
symptoms of health, and the next dayes content;  
cheerful and vacant thoughts, not always bound  
To counsel, or in deep Ideas drowned:  
( Though such late traverses and tumults might  
turn to a lump of care the ayriest wight)  
And since, while fragile flesh doth us array  
The humors still are combating for sway,  
( Which were they free of this reluctancy  
And counterpoys'd Man would immortal be)  
May sanguine ore the rest predominat  
in Him, and their malignant flux abate.   

May his great Queen( in whose Jmperious eye  
Raigne's such a world of winning Majesty)  
Like the rich Olive, or Falernian Vine,  
Swell w●th more gems of Cions masculine;  
And as Her fruit sprung from the Rose and luke,  
( The best of stems Earth yet did e're produce)  
is tied already by a Sanguine lace  
To all the Kings of Europe's highborne race,  
So may they shoot, their youthful branches o'er,  
The surging seas, and graffe with evry shore.   

May home-Comerce, and Trade increase from far,  
That both the Indies meet within his bars,  
And bring in Mounts of coin His mint's to feed,  
And Banquers( Trafique's chief supporters) breed,  
Which may enrich his kingdoms, Court and town,  
And ballast still the Coffers of the the crown,  
For Kingdoms are as ships, the Prince his chests  
The ballast, which if empty, when distress't  
With storms, their holds are lightly trimmed, the keel  
Can run no steedy course, but toss and reel.  
May his imperial Chamber always ply  
To his desires, her wealth to multiply,  
That she may prise his royal favour more  
Than al the wears fetched from the great Mogor,  
May the Great Senat with the subjects right  
Put in the Counter-scale, the regal might  
The flowers of th'Crown, that they may prop each other,  
And like the Grecian's twin live, love together.  
For the chief glory of a people is  
The power of their King, as Their is His.   

May He be still within himself at home,  
That no just passion make the reason rome,  
Yet Passions have their turns, to rouse the soul,  
And stir her slumbering Spirits not control,  
For as the Ocean besides ebb and flood,  
( Which Nature's greatest Clerk ner'e understood)  
Is not for sail, if an impregning wind  
Fills not the flagging canvas, so a mind  
Too calm, is not for Action, if desire  
Heat's not itself at passion's quickening fire,  
For Nature is allowed sometimes to muster  
Her passions, so they only blow, not bluster.   

May Iustice still in her true scales appear,  
And Honor fixed in no unworthy sphere,  
Unto whose palace all access should have  
Through virtues Temple, not through Plutos Cave.   

May his true subjects hearts be his chief Fort,  
Their purse his treasure, and their Love his Port  
Their prayers, as sweet Incense, to draw down  
myriad of blessings on his queen and crown.   

And now that his glad presence, did assuage,  
That fearful tempest in the North did rage,  
May those frogg-vapours in the Irish sky,  
Be scattered by the beams of Majesty,  
That the Hibernian lyre give such a sound,  
May on our coasts with joyful Ecchos bound.   

And when this fatal planet leaves to lower,  
Which to to long on Monarchies doth power  
His direful influence, may Peace once more  
Descend from Heaven on our tottering shore,  
And ride in triumph both on land and main,  
And with her milk-white stead esdraw Charles his wain,  
That so for those Saturnian times of old,  
An age of pearl may come inlieu of Gold.   

Be all his thoughts born perfect, and his hopes,  
In their events fall out beyond their scopes,  
virtue still guide his course, and if there be  
A thing as Fortune Him accompany.  
May no ill Genius haunt him, but by's side,  
The best protecting angel ever bide.   

May He go on to vindicate the right  
Of holy things, and make the Temple bright,  
To keep that Faith, that Sacred Truth entire  
Which He received from Salomon his fire.  
And since we all must hence, by th' Iron Decree,  
stamped 'mongst the black Records of destiny,  
Late may his life, his Glory ne're wear out,  
Till the great year of Plato wheel about.   
So prayeth The worst of Poets, to The best of Princes, yet The most loyal of His Votaries and vassals james howel   


Arhetine, id est, virtuous.  
Anagram. of Henrieta.   
The parliament.  
Hippocrates.  
King james.   

AN INQUISITION AFTER BLOOD.  
To the PARLIAMENT in statu quo nunc, AND To the ARMY Regnant; Or any other whether Royallist, Presbyterian, Independent or Leveller, whom it may concern.  
Blood is a crying sin, but that of Kings  
cries loudest for revenge, and ruin brings.  
Printed in the year, 1649.   

AN INQUISITION AFTER BLOOD.  
THE scope of this short discourse is to make some researches after Truth, and to rectify the world accordingly in point of opinion, specially touching the first Author and Aggressor of the late ugly war in England, which brought with it such an inundation of blood, and so let in so huge a torrent of mischiefs to rush upon us. There be many, and they not only Presbyterians and Independents, but Cavaliers also, who think that the King had taken the guilt of all this blood upon himself, in regard of that Concession he passed in the preamble of the late Treaty at the Isle of Wight; The aim of this Paper is to clear that point, but in so temperate a way, that I hope 'twill give no cause of exception, much less of offence to any: the blood that's sought after here, shall not be mingled with gaule, much less with any venom at all.  
We know there is no Principle either in Divinity, Law, or philosophy, but may be wrested to a wrong sense; there is no truth so demonstrative and clear, but may be subject to cavillations; no Tenet so plain, but perverse inferences may be drawn out of it; such a fate befell that preambular Concession His Majesty passed at the Transactions of the late Treaty, in that he acknowledged therein that the two Houses of Parliament were necessitated to undertake a war in their own just and lawful defence, &c. and that therfore all Oaths, Declarations, or other public Instruments against the Houses of Parliament, or any for adhering to them, &c. be declared null, suppressed, and forbidden.  
'tis true, His Majesty passed this grant, but with this weighty consideration, as it had reference to two ends.  
First, to smoothen and facilitate things thereby to ope a passage, and pave the way to a happy peace, which this poor island did so thirst after, having been so long glutted with civill blood.  
Secondly, that it might conduce to the further security, and the indemnifying of the two Houses of Parlement, with all their instruments, assistants, and adherents, and so rid them of all jealousies, and fear( of future dangers) which still lodged within them. Now touching the expressions and words of this Grant, they were not his own, nor did he give order for the dictating or penning thereof; the King was not the Author of them, but an Assenter only unto them: nor was He or his Party accused, or as much as mentioned in any of them, to draw the least guilt upon themselves. Besides, He passed them as he doth all laws and Acts of Parlement, which in case of absence another may do for him in his politic capacity, therefore they cannot prejudice his person any way. I am loth to say that he condescended to this Grant, — cum stricta novacula supra, When the razor was as it were at his throat, when ther was an Army of about thirty thousand effect if Horse and Foot that were in motion against him, when his Person had continued under a black long lingering restraint, and dangerous menacing Petitions and Papers daily obtruded against him. Moreover, His Majesty passed this Concession with these two provisos and reservatio●●,  
First, that it should be of no virtue or validity at all, till the whole Treaty were entirely consummated.  
Secondly, that he might when he pleased enlarge and clear the truth with the reservedness of his meaning herein, by public Declaration: Now the Treaty being confusedly huddled up, without discussing, or as much as receiving any Proposition from himself as was capitulated,( and reciprocal Proposals are of the essence of all Treaties) it could neither bind him, or turn any way to his disadvantage: Therfore under favour, ther was too much hast used by the Parlement, to draw that hipothetick or provisional Concession to the form of an Act so suddenly after in the very heat of the Treaty, without His Majesties knowledge, or the least intimation of his pleasure.  
Add hereunto, that this Grant was but a mere preambular Proposition, 'twas not of the essence of the Treaty itself: And as the Philosophers and schoolmen tell us, there is no valid proof can be drawn out of Proemes, Introductions or Corallaries in any science, but out of the positive assertions and body of the Text, which is only argument-proof; so in the Constitutions and laws of England, as also in all accusations and charges, forerunning prefaces and preambles( which commonly weak causes want most) are not pleadable: and though they use to be first in place, like gentlemen-Ushers, yet are they last in dignity, as also in framing, nor had they ever the force of laws, but may be termed their attendants to make way for them.  
Besides, ther's not a syllable in this preface which repeals or connives at any former Law of the Land, therefore those laws that so strictly inhibit English Subjects to raise arms against their liege Lord the King, and those laws è contrario, which exempt from all dangers, penalties or molestation any Subject that adheres to the person of the King in any cause or quarrel whatsoever, are still in force.  
Furthermore, this introductory Concession of the Kings, wherein he is contented to declare, That the two Houses were necessitated to take arms for their defence, may be said to have relation to the necessity, à parte pòst, not à parte antè: self-defence is the universal Law of Nature, and it extends to all other creatures, as well as the rational: As the fluent Roman Orator in that sentence of his, which is accounted among the critics the excellentest that ever dropped from him; Est enim haec non scripta, said nata Lex, quam non didicimus, accepimus, legimus, verùm ex natura ipsa arripuimus, hausimus, expressimus, ad quam non docti, said facti, non instituti, said imbuti sumus, ut si vita nostra in &c. For this( meaning self-defence) is not a written, but a Law born with us; A Law which we have not learnt, received or red, but that which we have sucked, drawn forth, and wrung out of Nature her self; A Law to which we are not taught, but made unto, wherewith we are not instructed, but endued withall, that if our lifes be in jeopardy, &c. we may repel force by force. Therefore when the House of Parliament had drawn upon them a necessity of self-defence( and I could have wished it had been against any other but their own sovereign Prince) his Majesty was contented to aclowledge that necessity. As for example: A man of war meets with a merchant man at Sea, he makes towards him, and assaults him; The merchant man having a good stout vessel under him, and resolute generous Seamen, bears up against him, gives him a whole broad side, and shoots him 'twixt wind and water; so there happens a furious fight betwixt them, which being ended, the merchant cannot deny but that the man of war, though the first Assailant, was necessitated to fight, and that justly in his own defence, which necessity he drew upon himself, and so was excusable, à posteriori, not à priori; As the Civilians speak of a clandestine marriage, Fieri non debuit, said factum valet; It ought not to have been, but being done 'tis valid: whereunto relates another saying, Multa sunt quae non nisi per acta approbantur. There are many things which are not allowable till they are passed.  
The Kings of France have had sundry civill wars, many bloody encounters and clashes with their Subjects, specially the last King Lewis the thirteenth, which turned all at last to his advantage; among other Treaties upon that of Lond●n, he was by force of Article to publish an Edict, Dons lequel le Roy approuvoit tout le passé comme ayant esté fait pour son service, &c. Whrein the King approved of all that was passed, as done for his service, &c. and these concessions and extenuations are usual at the close of most civill wars; but there was never any further advantage made of them, then to make the adverse party more capable of grace and pardon, to enable them to bear up against the brunt of laws, and secure them more firmly from all afterclaps; They were passed in order to an Act of Abolition, to a general pardon, and consequently to a re-establishment of Peace; now, Peace and liquor( we know) are like Water and Ice, they engender one another: But I do not remember to have red either in the French story, or any other, that such royal Concessions at the period of any intestine war were ever wrung so hard, as to draw any inference from them, to cast thereby the guilt of blood or indeed the least slain of dishonour upon the King; For royal Indulgences and grants of this nature are like nurses breasts, if you press them gently there will milk come forth, if you wring them too hard you will draw forth blood in lieu of milk: And I have observed, that upon the conclusion of such Treati●s in France, both pa●ties would hug and mutually embrace one another in a gallant way of national humanity; all rancour, all coverings, sequestration, and imprisonment, would cease, nor would any be prosecuted, much less made away afterwards in could blood.  
Touching the Comencer of this monstrous war of ours, the world knows too well, that the first man of blood was Blewcap, who shew'd Subjects the way, how to present their King with Petitions upon the pikes point, and what visible judgements have fallen upon him since by such confusions of discord and pestilence at home, and irreparable d●shonour abroad, let the world judge. The Irish took his rise from him: and whereas it hath been often suggested, that his Majesty had foreknowledge thereof, among a world of convincing arguments which may clear him in this particular, the Lord Maguair upon the ladder, and another upon the Scaffold, when they were ready to breath their last, and to appear before the tribunal of heaven, did absolutely acquit him, and that spontaneously of their own accord, being unsought unto, but only out of a love to truth, and the discharge of a good conscience: But touching those cruentous Irish wars, in regard there was nothing whereof more advantage was made against His late Majesty, to embitter and poison the hearts of his Subjects against him then that Rebellion, I will take leave to wind up the main causes of them upon a small bottom.  
1. They who kept intelligence and complied with the Scot, in his first and second insurrection.  
2. They who dismissed the first Irish Commissioners( who came of purpose to attend our Parlement with some grievances) with such a short unpolitic harsh answer.  
3. They who took off Straffords head,( which had it stood on, that Rebellion had never been) and afterwards retarded the dispatch of the Earl of Leicester from going over to be Lord-Lievtenant.  
4. Lastly, they who hindered part of that disbanded Army of 8000. men raised there by the Earl of Strafford, which His Majesty, in regard they were souldiers of fortune, and loose casheer'd men, to prevent the mischiefs that might befall that kingdom by their insolences, had promised the two Spanish Ambassadors, the Marquesses of Velada and Malvezzi, then resident in this Court: which souldiers rise up first of any, and put fire to the tumult to find something to do.  
They, I say, who did all this, may be justly said to have been the true causes of that horrid Insurrection in Ireland; and consequently 'tis easy to judge upon the account of whose souls must be laid the blood of those hundred and odd thousand poor Christians who perished in that war: and had it been possible to have brought o'er their bodies unputrified to England, and to have cast them at the lower House door, and in the presence of some Members, which are now either secluded, or gone to give account in another world, I believe their noses would have gushed out with blood for discovery of the true murtherers.  
Touching this last fire-brand of war, which was thrown into England, who kindled it first, the consciences of those indifferent and unbiased men are fittest to be judges, who have been curious to observe with impartial eyes, the carriage of things from the beginning: I confess 'twas a fatal infortunate thing, that the King should put such a distance 'twixt his Person and his Parliament, but a more fatal and barbarous thing it was, that he should be driven away from it, that there should be a desperate design to surprise his Person, that Ven with his Myrmidons, and Bourges with his Bandogs,( for so they called the riffraff of the City they brought along with them) should rabble him away, with above four parts in five of the Lords, and near upon two parts in three of the Commons: Yet 'tis fit it should be remembered, what reiterated Messages his Majesty sent from time to time afterward, that he was always ready to return, provided there might be a course taken to secure his Person, with those Peers and others who were rioted from the Houses; 'tis fit it should be remembered, that there was not the least motion of war at all, till Hotham kept his Majesty out of his own town Kingston upon Hull, where being attended by a few of his menial Servants, he came only to visit her, which act of shutting the gates against him was voted warrantable by the House of Commons, and it may be called the first thunderbolt of war: 'tis fit it should be remembered, that a while after there was a complete Army of 16000. effect ●f Horse and Foot enrolled in and about London to fetch him to his Parliament by force( before he put up his royal Standard) and remove ill Counsellors from about him, and the general named to live and die with them: and very observable it is, how that Generalls Father was executed for a traitor, for but attempting such a thing upon Queen Elizabeth, I mean to remove ill Counsellors from about her by force. 'tis also to be observed, that the same Army which was raised to bring him to his Parliament, was continued to a clean contrary end two yeers afterwards to keep him from his Parlement. 'tis fit it should be remembered who interdicted Trade first, and brought in foreigners to help them, and whose Commissions of war were near upon two moneths date before the Kings. 'tis fit it should be remembered how his Majesty in all his Declarations and public Instruments made always deep Protestations, that 'twas not against his Parliament he raised arms, but against some seditious Members, against whom he had onely desired the common benefit of the Law, but could not obtain it. 'tis fit to remember, that after any good successses or advantage of his, he still Courted both Parlement and City to an Accommodation; how upon the Treaty at Uxbridge, with much importunity for the general advantage and comfort of his people and to prepare matters more fitly for a peace, he desired there might be freedom of trade from Town to Town, and a Cessation of all Acts of Hostility for the time, that the inflammation being allayed, the wound might be cured the sooner: all which was denied him. 'tis fit to remember how a Noble Lord at that time  told the Parlements Commissioners in his Majesties Name, at the most unhappy rapture of the said Treaty, that when he was at the highest he would be ready to treat with them, and fight with them when he was at the lowest: 'tis fit the present Army should remember how often both in their proposals, and public Declarations they have informed the world, and deeply protested that their principal aim was to restore his majesty to honor, freedom and safety, whereunto they were formerly bound, both by their own Protestation and Covenant, that the two Commanders in chief pawned unto him their souls thereupon. Let them remember, that since he was first snatched away to their custody, he never displeased them in the least particular, but in all his Overtures for Peace, and all his Propositions he had regard still that the Army should be satisfied: let it be remembered, that to settle a blessed Peace to preserve his Subjects from rapine and ruin, and to give contentment to his Parlement, he did in effect freely part with his Sword, sceptre, and Crown, and every thing that was personal to him: Let it be remembered with what an admired temper, with what prudence and constancy with what moderation and mansuetude he comported himself since his deep afflictions, insomuch that those Commissioners and others who resorted unto him, and had had their hearts so averse unto him before, return'd his Converts, crying him up to be one of the sanctifiedst persons upon earth: and will not the blood of such a Prince cry aloud for vengeance?  
Let it be remembered, that though there be some Precedents of deposing Kings in this kingdom, and elsewhere, when there was a competition for the right Title to the Crown by some other of the blood royal, yet 'tis a thing not only unsampled, but unheard of in any age, that a King of England whose Title was without the least scruple, should be summoned and arraigned, tried, condemned, and executed in his own Kingdom, by his own Subjects, and by the name of their own King, to whom they had sworn allegiance.  
The meanest Barister that hath but tasted the Laws of the Land can tell you, that it is an unquestionable fundamental maxim, The King can do no wrong, because he acts by the mediation of his Agents and Ministers, he hears with other mens ears, he sees with other mens eyes, he consults with other mens brains, he executes with other mens hands, and judges with other mens consciences; therefore his Officers Counsellors or favourites are punishable, not He: and I know not one yet whom he hath spared, but sacrificed to Justice. The Crown of England is of so coruscant and pu●e a mettall, that it cannot receive the least taint or blemish; and if there were any before in the person of the Prince, it takes them all away and makes him to be Rectus in Curia. This as in many others may be exemplified in Henry the Seventh, and the late Queen Elizabeth: when the first came to the Crown 'twas mentioned in Parlement, that the attainder might be taken off him, under which he lay all the time he lived an Exile in France; it was then by the whole House of Pa●lement resolved upon the question, that it was unnecessary, because the Crown purged all. So likewise when Queen Elizabeth was brought as it were from the Scaffold to the Throne; though she was under a former attainder, yet 'twas thought superfluous to take it off, for the Crown washeth away al spots, and darteth such a brightness, such resplendent beams of Majesty, that quiter dispel al former clouds: so that put case King james died a violent death, and his Son had been accessary to it,( which is as base a lye as ever the devil belched out) yet his access to the Crown had purged all. This business about the plaster which was applied to King james, was sifted& winnow'd as narrowly as possibly a thing could be in former Parlements, yet when it was exhibited as an Article against the Duke of Buckingham, 'twas termed but a presumption or misdemeanure of a high nature, and 'tis strange that these new accusers should make that a parricide in the King, which was found but a presumption in the Duke, who in case it had been so, must needs have been the chiefest Accessary.  
And as the ancient Crown and royal Diadem of England is made of such pure alloy, and cast in so dainty a mould, that it can receive no taint, or contract the least spick of enormity and foulness in itself, so it doth endow the person of the Prince that wears it with such high Prerogative, that it exempts him from all sorts of public blemishes, from all Attainders, Empeachments, Summons, Arraignments and trials; nor is there or ever was any Law or Precedent in this Land, to lay any Crime or capital charge against him, though touching civill matters, touching property of meum and tuum, he may be impleaded by the meanest vassal that hath sworn fealty to him; as the Subjects of France, and Spain may against their Kings, though never so absolute Monarchs.  
In the Constitution of England, there are two incontroulable maxims, whereof the meanest mootman that hath but saluted Littleton cannot be ignorant: the first is, Rex in suis Dominiis neque habet Parem, nec Superiorem. The King in his own Dominions hath neither Peer, or Superior. The other is Satis habet Rex ad poenam quod Deum expectet ultorem: 'tis punishment enough for a King that God will take revenge of him. Therefore if it be the fundamental Constitution of the Land, that all just trials must be by Peers, and the Law proclaims the King to have none in his own Dominions, I leave the world to judge, what capacity or power those men had to arraign the late King, to be in effect his Judges, Accusers; and that an exorbitant unsampled tribunal should be erected, with power and purpose to condemn all that came before it, to clear none, and that sentence of death should pass without conviction or Law, upon him that was the head and protector of all the laws. Lastly, that they who by their own confession represent but the Common people, should assume power to cut off him who immediately represented God, cvi dabit partes scelus expiandi jupiter? Well, we have seen such portentous things, that former Ages never beholded, nor will future Ages ever be witness of the like: And now with thoughts full of consternation and horror; with a heart full of amazement and trembling for the flagrant and crying sins of this forlorn Nation, which hath drawn such an endless war, and an unheard of slavery upon itself, I will conclude with this short prayer, which carrieth with it as much of universal charity, as of particular: God amend all, and me first.  
FINIS.   

Ah, Ha; Tumulus, Thalamus: Two Counter- POEMS,  
The First, an ELEGY Upon Edward late Earl of Dorset;  
The Second, an EPITHALAMIVM to the Lord M. of Dorchester.  

Invicem cedunt Dolor& Voluptas,  
Funera, Taedae,   

Sorrow may endure for a Night,  
But joy cometh in the Morning.   
LONDON, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his Shop at the princes arms in St Paul's Church-yard. 1653.   

An Advertizement to the READER.  
IN regard ther are divers imperfect and spurious Copies of these two Poems dispersed abroad, I obtained leave of the Author to commit them to the press assuring the Reader that these are concordant with the originals.  
H. M.   

AN ELEGY UPON THE MOST accomplished AND HEROIC LORD EDWARD EARL OF DORSET, Lord Chamberlain to His late Majesty of Great Britain, and Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter, &c.  
Alluding to 

The Quality of the Times,  
His admired Perfections,  
His goodly Person,  
His ancient Pedigree,  
His Coat of arms crested with a Star;  
The Condition of Mortality,  
The Passion of the Author closing with an Epitaph.     

AN ELEGY UPON THE LATE EARL OF DORSET.  

LOrds have been long Declining,( we well know)  
And making their last Testaments, but now  
They are Defunct, they are extinguished All,  
And never like to rise by this Lords Fall;   

A Lord, whose intellectuals alone  
Might make a House of Peers, and prop a Throne,  
Had not so dire a Fate hung o'er the Crown,  
That Privilege Prerogative should drown;   

Where e're he sate he swayed,& Courts did awe,  
Gave Bishops gospel, and the Judges law  
With such exalted Reasons, which did flow  
So clear and strong, that made Astraea bow  
To his Opinion, for where He did side  
advantaged more than half the Bench beside.   

But is great Sakvile dead? Do we Him lack,  
And will not all the Elements wear black?  
Whereof he was composed a perfect man  
As ever Nature in one frame did span.  
Such Highborn Thoughts, a Soul so large and free,  
So clear a Judgement, and vast Memory,  
So Princely Hospitable and Brave Mind  
We must not think in hast on earth to find,  
Unless the Times would turn to Gold again,  
And Nature get new strength in forming men.   

His Person with it such a state did bring  
That made a Court as if He had been King,  
No wonder, since He was so near a Kin  
To Norfolks Duke, and the great maiden Queen.   

He courage had enough by conquering One  
To have confounded that whole Nation,  
Those parts which single do in some appear  
Were all concentred here in one bright sphere,   

For Brain, tongue, Spirit, Heart, and parsonage  
To mould up such a Lord will ask an age,  
But how durst pale white-livered Death seize on  
So dauntles and Heroic a Champion?   

Yes, to die once is that uncancell'd debt  
Which Nature claims, and raiseth by Eschet  
On all Mankind by an old Statute past  
Primo Adami, which will always last  
Without Repeal, nor can a second lease  
Be had of Life when the first term doth cease.   

Mount noble Soul, Among the stars take place,  
And make a new One of so bright a Race  
May Jove out-shine, that Venus still may be  
In a benign Conjunction with Thee,  
To check that Planet which on Lords hath loured,  
And such malign influxes lately powred;  
Be now a star thyself for those which here  
Did on thy Crest, and upper Robes appear,  
For thy Director take that Star we red  
Which to thy Saviours Birth three Kings did led.   

A Corollary.  

THus have I blubbered out some tears and Verse  
On this Renowned hero, and His hearse,  
And could my Eyes have dropped down Perls upon't  
In lieu of tears, God knows, I would have don't,  
But tears are real, Perls for their Emblems go,  
The first are fitter to express my Wo;  
Let this small mite suffize until I may  
A larger tribute to his ashes pay,   

In the mean time this Epitaph shall shut,  
And to my Elegy a period put.   

HEre lies a Grandee by Birth, Parts, and Mind,  
Who hardly left his parallel behind,  
Here lies the Man of Men, who should have been  
An Emperour, had Fate or Fortune seen.  
Totus in lachrymas solutus sic singultivit I. H.     

UPON THE nuptials OF THAT PRINCELY PAIR HENRY LORD M of DORCHESTER, AND The Lady KATHERINE STANLEY, Daughter to the late Heroic Earl of DERBY, An Epithalamium by way of Dialog 'twixt Philemon and silvius.  
Alluding to their 

1. Complexions, 

He sanguine,  
She Black and Fair.    
2. Coats of Arms, 

Both Field-Argent,  
His a Lion Rampant in an orb of Cinqfoyls.    
3. Countries.  
4. Pedigrees.    
Going on with an Hymenaeum, or Vote, comprised in four musical Stanzas, the three first airy and poetical, the last Serious.   

The DIALOGUE.  Philemon. 
WHat Object's that which I behold  
Dazzling my eyes with gems and Gold?  
Her Face, me thinks, darts such a ray  
That adds more brightness to the Day,  
Her breath perfumes the place, Her curls and hair  
Like Indian spice aromatize the Air,  
A sparkling white and black breaks from her sight  
Like to the Diamonds redoubling light,  
As she doth walk the very ground and ston  
Turn to Field-Argent which she treads upon;  
A Mortal sure she cannot be  
But some transcending deity;  
My dearest silvius pray unfold  
Who's that rare Creature I behold?  silvius. 
SHe is a Princess and a Bride  
Goes to the Temple to be tied  
In nuptial bonds, her stars will not permit  
That at the vestal fires She longer sit;  
She's Derbie's royal blood, Derby le grand,  
And now She travels to the Ile of Man,  
She of the Princely orange is a branch  
Imp'd on the high Trimovillan stem of France,  
Two of the fairest kingdoms striven, and tried  
Their Utmost to complete this Lovely Bride.  
'tis she which makes 'twixt gems and gold  
That Constellation you behold.  Philemon. 
BUt who's that comely sanguine Peer  
Which on her heart-side walks so near?  
He likewise makes all Argent as he goes,  
Look at his feet how thick the Cinqfoyl grows.  silvius. 
TIs Wise and Wealthy Pierrpont, who renowns  
With Titles, Three of Englands chiefest Towns,  
A precious ponderous Lord, whose sole Estate  
A Jury of new Barons might create,  
Patron of Virtue, Chivalry, and Arts  
'Cause he himself excels in all these Parts;  
'tis He who by the hand doth hold  
That Demi-Goddess you behold.  Philemon. 
Is't so? then my autumnal Muse shall sing  
An Hymenaeum, and fetch back Her spring,  
This Subject a fresh vigour doth inspire,  
And heats my brain with an unusual fire.   

AN HYMENAEUM, OR BRIDAL-SONET, Consisting of four Stanzas, and to be sung by three voices, according to a choice Air set thereunto by Mr. WILLIAM web.  

1. Chorus.  
MAy all Felicity betid  
This Princely Bridegroom, and his Bride.  
May those delights this morn shall bring  
Be endless as their nuptial Ring,  
May they be constant, and exceed  
Each Others Wishes, Hopes, and Creed,  
May the three Regions of the air  
power showers of blessings on this pair,  
May Sol and Cynthia with their rays,  
Silver their nights and gilled their dayes.   

2. Chorus  
All joys attend and best of Fate  
This noble Marques and His Mate.   

2.  
ye gentle Nymphs of Trent and d'ye  
Make hast to this solemnity,  
Your streams and beds now meet in one  
By this High-sprung conjunction,  
Ye Wood-nymphs who green garlands wear  
In Shirewood lands, and Delamer,  
ye Dames of Helicon attend,  
And Graces your sweet presence lend,  
Lucina come, and pray ther be  
Employment in due time for thee.   

Chorus.  
May all Felicity betid  
This noble Bridegroom, and his Bride.   

3.  
MAy they such gallant Males produce  
Both to the Rose and flower-deluce,  
That Englands Chivalry and French  
May multiply, and bourgeon hence,  
Whose branches shooting o'er the Main  
May knit, and blossom here again,  
That Pierrponts Lion and Cinqfoyl  
May ramp and root in every soil;  
Nor may this noble Race wear out  
Till Plato's Great year wheel about.   

Chorus.  
May all Felicity betid  
This noble Bridegroom, and his Bride.   

4. Stanza Closing with a serious gradual Vote.  
MAy all the Elements conspire  
To make them blessed in their desire,  
May all the Stars on them reflect  
Their mildest looks in Trine aspect,  
May all the Angels them defend  
From every thing doth ill portend,  
May Angells, Stars, and Elements  
afford Them such complete contents  
That They have nothing else to wish  
But a Perseverance of Bliss.   

Chorus.  
All joys attend and best of Fate  
This noble marquis and his Mate.  
Idem. I. ●.   
FINIS.