streets; and, that he himself was the first person that ever had picked

her up.

The gentleman told her, it was hard to believe persons who had been guilty of such heinous crimes, and very heartily admonished her to forsake her evil practices, to repent of what she had already done, and to amend her life for the future. She gave him many thanks for his good advice, and told him, she should think herself a very happy person, if either he, or any one else, would put her in a way to live otherwise. He told her, if she would resolve to amend for the future, he would take care to provide for her. She promised him, with all the asseverations imaginable, that she would: Whereupon he told her, that she should meet him the next day at a certain time and place; she coming according to appointment, he put her into a lodging he had provided, and, being well assured of her repentance and sincerity, and finding her an accomplished gentlewoman, soon after married her; and she made him a chaste and happy wife, and he lived as happily with her, as if she had been possessed of a portion of thousands of pounds.

Sophia. If I had here a bottle of wine, I would drink that gentleman's health; he, under God, saved the body and soul of that poor creature, and made a saint, by taking a sinner to his bed. I cannot chuse but reflect on our discourse, how naturally we have fallen from the discourse of matrimony, to love stories; we have talked away the time, as children cry themselves to sleep. But we must be gone, the sun is just down, and we shall be wanted at supper.

THE

SECRET HISTORY

OF THE

CALVES-HEAD CLUB:

OR, THE

REPUBLICAN UNMASKED :

Wherein is fully shewn the Religion of the Calves-Head heroes, in their anniversary thanksgiving-songs on the thirtieth of January, by them called Anthems, for the years 1693, 1694,1695, 1696, 1697; now pub. lished to demonstrate the restless, implacable spirit of a certain party still among us, who are never to be satisfied, till the present establishment in church and state is subverted.

Discite justitiam moniti, & non temnere divos.

VIRG.

London, printed, and sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster, 1703. Quarto, containing twenty-two pages.

THE PREFACE.

THE following collection has been so industriously handed up and down, where it was thought it would be well received, and confirm

those principles which too many have unhappily sucked in, and raise the confidence of those who were thought too bashful by their party, that some honest men have thought there could be no more effectual remedy for the mischief it might do, nor any surer way to stop the career than a publication: For, though many may presume, that, under the disguise of mirth, and the protection of a free conversation, they might safely venture to make an experiment how far the poison would work upon the undiscerning of untried constitutions, especially when rhime and musick were the vehicles, and under the rose' was the word; yet it is believed, when the malignity of the draught is publickly discovered, few will venture upon it without a sufficient antidote, and fewer have the hardiness to administer it.

These lines (for such ribaldry and trash deserve not the name of poems) were composed and set to musick for the use of the CalvesHead Club, which was erected by an impudent set of people, who have their feast of calves heads in several parts of the town, on the thirtieth of January, in derision of the day, and defiance of monarchy; at divers of which meetings the following compositions were sung, and, in affront to the church, called Anthems. These, which are here published, are said to have been written by Mr. Benjamin Bridgewater, and that he was largely rewarded by the members of the club for his pains. Whether Mr. Stevens was so well gratified for his sermons to the same tune, and on the same days, is more than the publisher dares say; but, perhaps, the pulpit was a bar to his pretensions, and the poet had been better rewarded than the preacher, had his sermons been put into rhime. However, it is hoped, that this publication may give a check to the evil of the example, and destroy the continuance of the practice, or at least give fair warning, and take away the pretence of surprise from those who shall proceed to insult the government in so saucy and so villainous a manner.

But, whatever the success may be, the publisher doubts not but his intentions are justified, and wishes the effect may demonstrate the reasonableness of them, by putting an end to so unchristian and scandalous a practice.

IT is a prodigious thing to consider (and, for the honour of my native country, I wish I could say it was a false imputation upon her) that the execrable regicides of king Charles the First should find any advocates, or abettors, still among us.

I say, it is prodigious, that, after the whole nation, by their representatives in parliament assembled, has enacted so solemn a detestation of this unnatural parricide, and appointed a day of humiliation for it, to continue to all ages of the world, there should be such a set of boutefeus yet remaining, so impudently audacious, as to justify a crime, for

which the three kingdoms have smarted so severely; and, in their wicked merriment, to act over, as much as in them lies, that tragical scene, which has justly made us infamous in the remotest corners of the uni

verse:

Was it not enough that a powerful prince, allied to most of the crowned heads in Christendom, was despoiled of that just authority, wherewith the laws of God and man had invested him, and, lastly, of his life, but that he must be most barbarously persecuted after his death, and suffer those indignities in his memory, when dead, which he had so plentifully suffered in his person, when living?

There is a time, when the most implacable malice is satiated, and exerts itself no louger. The most savage nations seldom, or never, carried their resentments beyond the grave; and thought it a piece of barbarous cowardice, to insult upon the ashes of those that could not speak for themselves.

But the royal martyr has been treated, if it is possible, with more inhumanity after his desolation, than he was exposed to when under the power of his rebellious subjects. He has not only been stigmatised by the odious name of tyrant, who was, in truth, the best and most merciful father of his country, and loaded with a thousand undeserved calumnies; but, what shews the restless malice of his adversaries, even that incomparable book of devotion, composed by him in his solitude, and the time of his deepest afflictions, and which no pen, but his own, could have written, has been adjudged from him by a *late mercenary author; although it is certain to any man, at least, that can distinguish stiles, that the person, to whom the republicans ascribe it, was no more capable of writing so excellent a piece, than the aforesaid compiler of Milton's Life, of writing an orthodox system of the mysteries of christianity.

Thus, as he was torn from his queen and children in his life, he was robbed, as far as it lay in the power of his malicious enemies, even of the legitimate issue of his brain: Tho' as truth, but especially truth injuriously oppressed, never wants some generous hands to defend its cause; so all the arguments that have been used by the republicans, to prove it a spurious piece, have been fully answered by a worthy † divine now living, beyond all possibility of a reply.

The barbarity of his enemies stopped not here; for, not content to have assassinated his person and reputation, they even dispossessed him of his sepulchre, a piece of cruelty, which none but thorough paced villains ever executed, for, when the long parliament had voted an honourable interment for their late prince, who had suffered so unjustly, all was stopped, by reason that the persons, ordered to regulate the ceremony, when they came to examine the royal coffin, found the body missing.

This puts me in mind of what a worthy gentleman, who travelled with my Lord A-- into Italy, told me some years ago, viz. That, during his short stay at Bern in Switzerland, a syndic of the town, who

• See Toland's Life of Milton. + Dr. Wagstaff. King's Trial.

Sec Dr. Nelson's Preface to the

used frequently to visit Major-General Ludlow, when he lived in those parts, assured him, that he had often heard Ludlow, in a vaunting manner, affirm, that, though Ireton and Cromwell were buried under Ty burn, yet, it was a comfort to him, that the royal martyr kept them company; for, says he, foreseeing that his son would undoubtedly come in, we took care that his father's body should not be idolatrously worshipped by the cavaliers; and therefore privately removed it to the place of common execution.

Whether the matter of fact, as Ludlow related it, be true or false, it is not material here to enquire; though I think nothing can give any honest man a juster and greater aversion to the libertines of that party, than to observe that their malice has no bounds, and that it neither spares the dead nor the living.

But, of all the indignities offered to the manes of this injured prince, nothing, in my opinion, comes up to the inhumanity and profaneness of the Calves-Head Club.

For my part, I was of opinion at first, that the story was purely contriued on purpose to render the republicans more odious than they deserved; for I could not imagine, how any men that pretended to be christians, or called themselves Englishmen, could calmly and sedately applaud an action, condemned not only by the word of God, but by the laws of the land, to which they pretend to pay so great a defe

rence.

As for the regicides, who were actually concerned in this execrable tragedy, this may be said, however, in favour of them, if I may be allowed so to express myself towards criminals of that magnitude, that having gone so far in their wickedness, and given his majesty such insupportable provocations; and, what is more, measuring his clemency by their own, they concluded he could never forgive them; and, therefore, like Cataline, found themselves under the necessity of committing greater crimes, in order to cover themselves from what was past.

But what can be offered to extenuate the crime of these atheistical miscreants, who make that a matter of their lewd mirth, which the whole nation has, in the most solemn manner, ever since lamented, and, over their cups, applaud the most wicked action which the sun ever beheld?

For this reason, my good nature made me look upon it as a fiction upon the party, till happening, in the late reign, to be in the company of a certain active whig, who, in all other respects, was a man of probity enough; he assured me, that, to his knowledge, it was true; that he knew most of the members of that club, and that he had been often invited to their meetings, but that he had always avoided them; adding, that, according to the principles he was bred up in, he would have made no scruple to have met king Charles the First, in the field, and opposed him to the utmost of his power; but that, since he was dead, he had no further quarrel to him, and looked upon it as a cowardly piece of villainy, below any man of honour, to insult upon the memory of a prince, who had suffered enough in his life-time.

He farther told me, that Milton, and some other creatures of the commonwealth, had instituted this club, as he was informed, in oppo

sition to Bishop Juxon, Dr. Sanderson, Dr. Hammond, and other divines of the church of England, who met privately every thirtieth of January; and, though it was under the time of the usurpation, had compiled a private form of service for the day, not much different from what we now find in the liturgy.

That, after the restoration, the eyes of the government being upon the whole party, they were obliged to meet with a great deal of precaution; but now, says he (and this was the second year of king William's reign) they meet almost in a publick manner, and apprehend nothing.

By another gentleman, who, about eight years ago, went out of mere curiosity to see their club, and has since furnished me with the following papers, I was informed, that it was kept in no fixed house, but that they removed as they saw convenient; that the place they met in, when he was with them, was in a blind alley about Moorfields; that the company wholly consisted of independants and anabaptists (I am glad, for the honour of the Presbyterians, to set down this remark) that the famous Jerry White, formerly chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, who, no doubt of it, came to sanctify, with his pious exhortations, the ribaldry of the day, said grace; that, after the table-cloth was removed, the anniversary anthem, as they impiously called it, was sung, and a calf's skull, filled with wine or other liquor, and then a brimmer went about to the pious memory of those worthy patriots that had killed the tyrant, and delivered their country from his arbitrary sway; and, lastly, a collection made for the mercenary scribbler, to which every man contributed according to his zeal for the cause, or the ability of his purse.

I have taken care to set down what the gentleman told me, as faithfully as my memory would give me leave, and I am persuaded, that some persons that frequent the Black Boy in Newgate-strect, as they knew the author of the following lines, so they know this account of the Calves-Head Club to be true.

Now I will appeal to any unprejudiced Englishman, whether such shameful assemblies ought not to be suppressed with the utmost dili

gence.

Let us consider them, either in relation to the christian religion we profess, or to common humanity and good manners, or, lastly, to the laws of the land, and they affront all equally.

Therefore, I hope the magistrates and others, whom it concerns, will take care, especially now, since they have the countenance of the government, to prohibit, as far as in them lies, and detect these wicked meetings, that the persons, there assembling, may be punished as they

deserve.

Though no man abominates persecution more than myself, yet, I will venture to say, that a set of people, who wish the subversion of our ecclesiastical and civil establishment, as appears by the following papers, ought to expect no quarter from our hands.