law never supposed so great an arrogance could be in one man; that he whose seventeen years unexperience had almost ruined all, should sit another seven years school-master to tutor those who were sent by the whole realm to be his counsellors and teachers. And with what modesty can he pretend to be a statesman himself, who with his father's king-craft and his own, did never that of his own accord, which was not directly opposite to his professed interest both at home and abroad; discontenting and alienating his subjects at home, weakening and deserting his confederates abroad, and with them the common cause of religion; so that the whole course of his reign, by an example of his own furnishing, hath resembled Phaeton more than Phœbus, and forced the parliament to drive like Jehu; which omen taken from his own mouth, God hath not diverted?

And he on the other side might have remembered, that the parliament sit in that body, not as his subjects, but as his superiors, called, not by him, but by the law; not only twice every year, but as oft as great affairs require, to be his counsellors and dictators, though he stomach it; nor to be dissolved at his pleasure, but when all grievances be first removed, all petitions heard and answered. This is not only reason, but the known law of the land.

"When he heard that propositions would be sent him," he sat conjecturing what they would propound; and because they propounded what he expected not, he takes that to be a warrant for his denying them. But what did he expect? He expected that the parliament would reinforce "some old laws." But if those laws were not a sufficient remedy to all grievances, nay, were found to be grievances themselves, when did we lose that other part of our freedom to establish new? He thought "some injuries done by himself and others to the commonwealth were to be repaired." But how could that be, while he the chief offender took upon him to be sole judge both of the injury and the reparation? "He staid till the advantages of his crown considered, might induce him to condescend to the people's good." When as the crown itself with all those advantages were therefore given him, that the people's good should be first considered; not bargained for, and bought by inches with the bribe of more offertures and advantages to his crown. He looked "for moderate desires of due reformation;" as if any such desires could be immoderate. He looked for such a reformation "both in church and state, as might preserve" the roots of every grievance and abuse in both still growing, (which he calls "the foundation and essentials,") and would have only the excrescences of evil pruned away for the present, as was plotted before, that they might grow fast enough between triennial parliaments, to hinder them by work enough besides from ever striking at the root. He alleges, "They should have had regard to the laws in force, to the wisdom and piety of former parliaments, to the ancient and universal practice of Christian churches." As if they who come with full authority to redress public grievances, which ofttimes are laws themselves, were to have their hands bound by laws in force, or the supposition of more piety and wisdom in their ancestors, or the practice of churches heretofore; whose fathers, notwithstanding all these pretences, made as vast alterations to free themselves from ancient popery. For all antiquity that adds or varies from the Scripture, is no more warranted to our safe imitation, than what was done the age before at Trent. Nor was there need to have despaired of what could be established in lieu of what was to be annulled, having before his eyes the government of so many churches beyond the seas; whose pregnant and solid reasons wrought so with the parliament, as to desire a uniformity rather with all other pro

testants, than to be a schism divided from them under a conclave of thirty bishops, and a crew of irreligious priests that gaped for the same preferment.

And whereas he blames those propositions for not containing what they ought, what did they mention, but to vindicate and restore the rights of parliament invaded by cabin councils, the courts of justice obstructed, and the government of the church innovated and corrupted? All these things he might easily have observed in them, which he affirms he could not find; but found "those demanding" in parliament, who were "looked upon before as factious in the state, and schismatical in the church; and demanding not only toleration for themselves in their vanity, novelty, and confusion, but also an extirpation of that government, whose rights they had a mind to invade." Was this man ever likely to be advised, who with such a prejudice and disesteem sets himself against his chosen and appointed counsellors? likely ever to admit of reformation, who censures all the government of other protestant churches, as bad as any papist could have censured them? And what king had ever his whole kingdom in such contempt, so to wrong and dishonour the free elections of his people, as to judge them, whom the nation thought worthiest to sit with him in parliament, few else but such as were "punishable by the laws?" yet knowing that time was, when to be a protestant, to be a Christian, was by law as punishable as to be a traitor; and that our Saviour himself, coming to reform his church, was accused of an intent to invade Cæsar's right, as good a right as the prelate bishops ever had; the one being got by force, the other by spiritual usurpation; and both by force upheld.

He admires and falls into an ecstasy, that the parliament should send him such a "horrid proposition," as the removal of episcopacy. But expect from him in an ecstasy no other reasons of his admiration than the dream and tautology of what he hath so often repeated, law, antiquity, ancestors, prosperity, and the like, which will be therefore not worth a second answer, but may pass with his own comparison into the common sewer of other popish arguments.

"Had the two houses sued out their livery from the wardship of tumults," he could sooner have believed them. It concerned them first to sue out their livery from the unjust wardship of his encroaching prerogative. And had he also redeemed his overdated minority from a pupilage under bishops, he would much less have mistrusted his parliament; and never would have set so base a character upon them, as to count them no better than the vassals of certain nameless men, whom he charges to be such as "hunt after faction with their hounds the tumults." And yet the bishops could have told him, that Nimrod, the first that hunted after faction, is reputed by ancient tradition the first that founded monarchy; whence it appears, that to hunt after faction is more properly the king's game; and those hounds, which he calls the vulgar, have been often hallooed to from court, of whom the mongrel sort have been enticed; the rest have not lost their scent, but understood aright, that the parliament had that part to act, which he had failed in; that trust to discharge, which he had broken; that estate and honour to preserve, which was far beyond his, the estate and honour of the commonwealth, which he had embezzled.

Yet so far doth self opinion or false principles delude and transport him, as to think "the concurrence of his reason" to the votes of parliament, not only political, but natural, "and as necessary to the begetting," or bringing forth of any one "complete act of public wisdom as the sun's influence is necessary to all nature's productions." So that the parliament, it seems,

is but a female, and without his procreative reason, the laws which they can produce are but wind-eggs: wisdom, it seems, to a king is natural, to a parliament not natural, but by conjunction with the king; yet he professes to hold his kingly right by law; and if no law could be made but by the great council of a nation, which we now term a parliament, then certainly it was a parliament that first created kings; and not only made laws before a king was in being, but those laws especially whereby he holds his crown. He ought then to have so thought of a parliament, if he count it not male, as of his mother, which to civil being created both him and the royalty he wore. And if it hath been anciently interpreted the presaging sign of a future tyrant, but to dream of copulation with his mother, what can it be less than actual tyranny to affirm waking, that the parliament, which is his mother, can neither conceive or bring forth " "any authoritative act" without his masculine coition? Nay, that his reason is as celestial and life-giving to the parliament, as the sun's influence is to the earth: what other notions but these, or such like, could swell up Caligula to think himself a god?

But to be rid of these mortifying propositions, he leaves no tyrannical evasion unessayed; first, "that they are not the joint and free desires of both houses, or the major part;" next, "that the choice of many members was carried on by faction." The former of these is already discovered to be an old device put first in practice by Charles the Fifth, since the reformation who when the protestants of Germany for their own defence joined themselves in league, in his declarations and remonstrances laid the fault only upon some few, (for it was dangerous to take notice of too many enemies,) and accused them, that under colour of religion they had a purpose to invade his and the church's right; by which policy he deceived many of the German cities, and kept them divided from that league, until they saw themselves brought into a snare. That other cavil against the people's choice puts us in mind rather what the court was wont to do, and how to tamper with elections: neither was there at that time any faction more potent, or more likely to do such a business, than they themselves who complain most.

But he must chew such morsels as propositions, ere he let them down." So let him; but if the kingdom shall taste nothing but after his chewing, what does he make of the kingdom but a great baby? "The straightness of his conscience will not give him leave to swallow down such camels of sacrilege and injustice as others do." This is the Pharisee up and down, "I am not as other men are." But what camels of injustice he could devour, all his three realms were witness, which was the cause that they almost perished for want of parliaments. And he that will be unjust to man, will be sacrilegious to God; and to bereave a Christian conscious of liberty for no other reason than the narrowness of his own conscience, is the most unjust measure to man, and the worst sacrilege to God. That other, which he calls sacrilege, of taking from the clergy that superfluous wealth, which antiquity as old as Constantine, from the credit of a divine vision, counted "poison in the church," hath been ever most opposed by men, whose righteousness in other matters hath been least observed. He concludes, as his manner is, with high commendation of his own "unbiassed rectitude," and believes nothing to be in them that dissent from him, but faction, innovation, and particular designs. Of these repetitions I find no end, no not in his prayer; which being founded upon deceitful principles, and a fond hope that God will bless him in those errors, which he calls "honest," finds a fit answer of St. James, "Ye ask and receive not, be

cause ye ask amiss." As for the truth and sincerity, which he prays may be always found in those his declarations to the people, the contrariety of his own actions will bear eternal witness, how little careful or solicitous he was, what he promised or what he uttered there.

XII. Upon the Rebellion in Ireland.

THE rebellion and horrid massacre of English protestants in Ireland, to the number of 154,000 in the province of Ulster only, by their own computation; which added to the other three, makes up the total sum of that slaughter in all likelihood four times as great; although so sudden and so violent, as at first to amaze all men that were not accessary; yet from whom and from what counsels it first sprung, neither was nor could be possibly so secret, as the contrivers thereof, blinded with vain hope, or the despair that other plots would succeed, supposed. For it cannot be imaginable, that the Irish, guided by so many subtle and Italian heads of the Romish party, should so far have lost the use of reason, and indeed of common sense, as not supported with other strength than their own, to begin a war so desperate and irreconcilable against both England and Scotland at once. All other nations, from whom they could expect aid, were busied to the utmost in their own most necessary concernments. It remains then that either some authority, or some great assistance promised them from England, was that whereon they chiefly trusted. And as it is not difficult to discern from what inducing cause this insurrection first arose, so neither was it hard at first to have applied some effectual remedy, though not prevention. And yet prevention was not hopeless, when Strafford either believed not, or did not care to believe, the several warnings and discoveries thereof, which more than once by papists and by friars themselves were brought him; besides what was brought by deposition, divers months before that rebellion, to the archbishop of Canterbury and others of the king's council; as the declaration of "no addresses" declares. But the assurance which they had in private, that no remedy should be applied, was, it seems, one of the chief reasons that drew on their undertaking. And long it was before that assurance failed them; until the bishops and popish lords, who, while they sat and voted, still opposed the sending aid to Ireland, were expelled the house.

Seeing then the main excitement and authority for this rebellion must be needs derived from England, it will be next inquired, who was the prime author. The king here denounces a malediction temporal and eternal, not simply to the author, but to the "malicious author" of this bloodshed: and by that limitation may exempt, not himself only, but perhaps the Irish rebels themselves, who never will confess to God or man that any blood was shed by them maliciously; but either in the catholic cause, or common liberty, or some other specious plea, which the conscience from grounds both good and evil usually suggests to itself: thereby thinking to elude the direct force of that imputation, which lies upon them.

Yet he acknowledges, "it fell out as a most unhappy advantage of some men's malice against him:" but indeed of most men's just suspicion, by finding in it no such wide departure or disagreement from the scope of his former counsels and proceedings. And that he himself was the author of that rebellion, he denies both here and elsewhere, with many imprecations, but no solid evidence: What on the other side against his denial hath been

affirmed in three kingdoms, being here briefly set in view, the reader may so judge as he finds cause.

This is most certain, that the king was ever friendly to the Irish papists, and in his third year, against the plain advice of parliament, like a kind of pope, sold them many indulgences for money; and upon all occasions advancing the popish party, and negotiating underhand by priests, who were made his agents, engaged the Irish papists in a war against the Scots protestants. To that end he furnished them, and had them trained in, arms, and kept them up, either openly or underhand, the only army in his three kingdoms, till the very burst of that rebellion. The summer before that dismal October, a committee of most active papists, all since in the head of that rebellion, were in great favour at Whitehall; and admitted to many private consultations with the king and queen. And to make it evident that no mean matters were the subject of those conferences, at their request he gave away his peculiar right to more than five Irish counties, for the payment of an inconsiderable rent. They departed not home till within two months before the rebellion; and were either from the first breaking out, or soon after, found to be the chief rebels themselves. But what should move the king besides his own inclination to popery, and the prevalence of his queen over him, to hold such frequent and close meetings with a committee of Irish papists in his own house, while the parliament of England sat unadvised with, is declared by a Scots author, and of itself is clear enough. The parliament at the beginning of that summer, having put Strafford to death, imprisoned others his chief favourites, and driven the rest to fly; the king, who had in vain tempted both the Scots and the English army to come up against the parliament and city, finding no compliance answerable to his hope from the protestant armies, betakes himself last to the Irish; who had in readiness an army of eight thousand papists, which he had refused so often to disband, and a committee here of the same religion. With them, who thought the time now come, (which to bring about they had been many years before not wishing only, but with much industry complotting, to do some eminent service for the church of Rome and their own perfidious natures, against a puritan parliament and the hated English their masters,) he agrees and concludes, that so soon as both armies in England were disbanded, the Irish should appear in arms, master all the protestants, and help the king against his parliament. And we need not doubt, that those five counties were given to the Irish for other reason than the four northern counties had been a little before offered to the Scots. The king, in August, takes a journey into Scotland; and overtaking the Scots army then on their way home, attempts the second time to pervert them, but without success. No sooner come into Scotland, but he lays a plot, so saith the Scots author, to remove out of the way such of the nobility there as were most likely to withstand, or not to further his designs. This being discovered, he sends from his side one Dillon, a papist lord, soon after a chief rebel, with letters into Ireland; and dispatches a commission under the great seal of Scotland, at that time in his own custody, commanding that they should forthwith, as had been formerly agreed, cause all the Irish to rise in arms. Who no sooner had received such command, but obeyed, and began in massacre; for they knew no other way to make sure the protestants, which was commanded them expressly; and the way, it seems, left to their discretion. He who hath a mind to read the commission itself, and sound reason added why it was not likely to be forged, besides the attestation of so many Irish themselves, may have recourse to a book, entitled, "The Mystery of Iniquity." Be