Answer to a Book, Part 9
IX. Upon the listing and raising Armies, &c.
IT were an endless work to walk side by side with the Verbosity of this Chapter; onelyonly to what already hath not bin spok'n, convenient answer shall be giv'n. Hee begins againe with Tumults; all demonstration of the Peoples Love and Loyaltie to the Parlament was Tumult; thir Petitioning, Tumult; thir defensive Armies were but listed Tumults, and will take no notice that those about him, those in a time of peace listed into his own House, were the beginners of all these Tumults; abusing and assaulting not onelyonly such as came peaceably to the Parlament at London, but those that came Petitioning to the King himself at York. Neither did they abstain from doing violence and outrage to the Messengers sent from Parlament; he himself either count nancing, or conniving at them.
He supposes that His recess gave us confidence that he might be conquer'd. Other men suppose both that, and all things els, who knew him neither by nature Warlike, nor experienc'd, nor fortunate; so farr was any man that discern'd aught, from esteeming him unconquerable; yet such are readiest to imbroile others.
But he had a soule invincible. What praise is that? The stomach of a Child is ofttimes invincible to all correction. The unteachable man hath a soule to all reason and good advice invincible; and he who is intractable, he whom nothing can perswade, may boast himself invincible; whenas in some things to be overcome is more honest and laudable then to conquer.
He labours to have it thought that his fearing God more then Man was the ground of his sufferings; but he should have known that a good principle not rightly understood, may prove as hurtfull as a bad; and his feare of God may be as faulty as a blind zeale. He pretended to feare God more then the Parlament; who never urg'd him to doe otherwise; he should also have fear'd God more then he did his Courtiers and the Bishops, who drew him, as they pleas'd, to things inconsistent with the feare of God. Thus boasted Saul to have perform'd the Commandment of God, and stood in it against Samuel; but it was found at length that he had fear'd the people more then God, in saving those fatt Oxen for the worship of God, which were appointed for destruction. Not much unlike, if not much wors, was that fact of his, who for feare to displease his Court, and mungrel Clergy, with the dissolutest of the people, upheld in the Church of God, while his power lasted, those Beasts of Amalec, the Prelats against the advice of his Parlament and the example of all Reformation; in this more unexcusable then Saul, that Saul was at length convinc'd, he to the howr of death fix'd in his fals perswasion; and sooths himself in the flattering peace of an erroneous and obdurat conscience, singing to his soul vain Psalms of exultation, as if the Parlament had assail'd his reason with the force of Arms, and not lie on the contrary their reason with his Armes; which hath bin prov'd already, and shall be more heerafter.
He twitts them with his Acts of grace; proud, and unself-knowing words in the mouth of any King, who affects not to be a God, and such as ought to be as odious in the ears of a free Nation. For if they were unjust acts, why did he grant them as of grace? If just, it was not of his grace, but of his duty and his Oath to grant them.
A glorious King he would be, though by his sufferings: But that can never be to him whose sufferings are his own doings. He faines a hard chois put upon him either to kill his own Subjects or be kill'd. Yet never was King less in danger of any violence from his Subjects, till he unsheath'd his Sword against them; nay long after that time, when he had spilt the blood of thousands, they had still his person in a foolish veneration.
Hee complaines, That civil Warr must be the fruits of of his seventeen yeares raigning with such a measure of Justice, Peace, and Plenty, and Religion, as all Nations either admir'd or envi'd. For the Justice we had, let the Counsel-Table, Starr-Chamber, High Commission speak the praise of it; not forgetting the unprincely usage, and, as farr as might be, the abolishing of Parlaments, the displacing of honest Judges, the sale of Offices, Bribery and Exaction not found out to be punish'd, but to be shar'd in, with impunity for the time to come. Who can number the extortions, the oppressions, the public robberies, and rapines, committed on the Subject both by Sea and Land, under various pretences? Thir possessions also tak'n from them, one while as Forrest Land, another while as Crown-Land; nor were thir Goods exempted, no not the Bullion in the Mint; Piracy was become a project own'd and authoriz'd against the Subject.
For the peace we had, what peace was that which drew out the English to a needless and disshonourable voyage against the Spaniard at Cales? Or that which lent our shipping to a treacherous and Antichristian Warr against the poore Protestants of Rochell our suppliants? What peace was that which fell to rob the French by Sea, to the imbarring of all our Merchants in that Kingdom? which brought forth that unblest expedition to the Ile of Rhee, doubtfull whether more calamitous in the success or in the designe, betraying all the flowre of our military youth, and best Commanders to a shamefull surprisal and execution. This was the peace we had, and the peace we gave, whether to freinds or to foes abroad. And if at home any peace were intended us, what meant those Irish billeted Souldiers in all parts of the Kingdom, and the designe of German Horse, to fubdue us in our peacefull Houses?
For our Religion where was there a more ignorant, profane, and vitious Clergy, learned in nothing but the antiquitie of thir pride, thir covetousnes and superstition; whose unsincere and levenous Doctrine corrupting the people, first taught them loosness, then bondage; loosning them from all sound knowledge and strictness of life, the more to fit them for the bondage of Tyranny and superstition. So that what was left us for other Nations not to pitty rather then admire or envy, all those seaventeen yeares, no wise man could see. For wealth and plenty in a land where Justice raignes not, is no argument of a flourishing State, but of a neerness rather to ruin or commotion.
These were not some miscariages onelyonly of Goverment, which might escape, but a universal distemper, and reducement of law to arbitrary power; not through the evil counsels of some men, but through the constant cours & practise of al that were in highest favour: whose worst actions frequently avowing he took upon himself; and what faults did not yet seem in public to be originally his, such care he took by professing, and proclaiming op'nly, as made them all at length his own adopted sins. The persons also when he could no longer protect, he esteem'd and favour'd to the end; but never, otherwise then by constraint, yeilded any of them to due punishment; thereby manifesting that what they did was by his own Autority and approbation.
Yet heer he asks whose innocent blood he hath shed, What widdows or Orphans teares can witness against him? After the suspected Poysoning of his Father, not inquir'd into, but smother'd up, and him protected and advanc'd to the very half of his Kingdom, who was accus'd in Parlament to be Author of the fact; (with much more evidence, then Duke Dudley that fals Protector is accus'd upon record, to have poison'd Edward the sixt) after all his rage and persecution, after so many Yeares of cruel Warr on his People in three Kingdoms. Whence the Author of Truths manifest, a Scotchman not unacquainted with affaires, positively affirmes That there hath bin more Christian blood shed by the Commission, approbation, and connivance of King Charles, and his Father James in the latter end of thir raigne, then in the Ten Roman Persecutions. Not to speake of those many whippings, Pillories, and other corporal inflictions wherwith his raign also before this Warr was not unbloodie; some have dy'd in Prison under cruel restraint, others in Banishment, whose lives were shortn'd through the rigour of that persecution wherwith so many yeares he infested the true Church. And those six Members all men judg'd to have escap'd no less then capital danger; whom he so greedily pursuing into the House of Commons, had not there the forbearance to conceal how much it troubl'd him, That the Birds were flowne. If som Vultur in the Mountains could have op'nd his beak intelligibly and spoke, what fitter words could he have utter'd at the loss of his prey? The Tyrant Nero, though not yet deserving that name, sett his hand so unwillingly to the execution of a condemned Person, as to wish He had not known letters. Certainly for a King himself to charge his Subjects with high treason, and so vehemently to prosecute them in his own cause, as to doe the Office of a Searcher, argu'd in him no great aversation from shedding blood, were it but to satisfie his anger, and that revenge was no unpleasing morsel to him, wherof he himself thought not much to be so diligently his own Caterer. But we insist rather upon what was actual then what was probable.
He now falls to examin the causes of this Warr, as a difficulty which he had long studied to find out. It was not saith he, my withdrawing from White Hall; for no account in reason could be giv'n of those Tumults, where an orderly Guard was granted. But if it be a most certain truth that the Parlament could never yet obtain of him any Guard fit to be confided in, then by his own confession some account of those pretended Tumults may in reason be giv'n: and both concerning them and the Guards anough hath bin said alreadie.
Whom did he protect against the Justice of Parlament? Whom did he not to his utmost power? Endeavouring to have rescu'd Strafford from thir Justice, though with the destruction of them and the City; to that end expressly commanding the admittance of new Soldiers into the Tower, rais'd by Suckling and other Conspirators, under pretence for the Portugall; though that Embassador, beeing sent to, utterly deny'd to know of any such Commission from his Maister. And yet that listing continu'd. Not to repeat his other Plot of bringing up the two Armies. But what can be disputed with such a King in whose mouth and opinion the Parlament it self was never but a Faction, and thir Justice no Justice, but The dictates and overswaying insolence of Tumults and Rabbles; and under that excuse avouches himself op'nly the generall Patron of most notorious Delinquents, and approves their flight out of the Land, whose crimes were such, as that the justest and the fairest tryal would have soonest condemn'd them to death. But did not Catiline plead in like manner against the Roman Senat and the injustice of thir trial, and the justice of his flight from Rome? Coesar also, then hatching Tyranny, injected the same scrupulous demurrs to stop the sentence of death in full and free Senat decreed on Lentulus and Cethegus two of Catilines accomplices, which were renew'd and urg'd for Strafford. He voutsafes to the Reformation by both Kingdoms intended, no better name then Innovation and ruine both in Church and State. And what we would have learnt so gladly of him in other passages before, to know wherin, he tells us now of his own accord. The expelling of Bishops cut of the House of Peers, this was ruin to the State, the removing them root and branch, this was ruin to the Church. How happy could this Nation be in such a Governour who counted that thir ruin, which they thought thir deliverance, the ruin both of Church and State, which was the recovery and the saving of them both.
To the passing of those Bills against Bishops, how is it likely that the House of Peers gave so hardly thir consent, which they gave so easily before to the attaching them of High Treason, 12. at once, onelyonly for protesting that the Parlament could not act without them. Surely if thir rights and privileges were thought so undoubted in that House, as is heer maintain'd; then was that Protestation being meant and intended in the name of thir whole spiritual Order, no Treason: and so that House it self will becom liable to a just construction either of Injustice to appeach them for so consenting, or of usurpation, representing none but themselves, to expect that their voting or not voting should obstruct the Commons. Who not for five repulses of the Lords, no not for fifty, were to desist from what in name of the whole Kingdom they demanded, so long as those Lords were none of our Lords. And for the Bil against root and branch, though it pass'd not in both Houses till many of the Lords and some few of the Commons, either intic'd away by the King, or overaw'd by the sense of thir own Malignācy not prevailing, deserted the Parlament, and made a fair riddance of themselves, that was no warrant for them who remain'd faithfull, beeing farr the greater number, to lay aside that Bill of root and branch, till the returne of thir fugitives; a Bill so necessary and so much desir'd by them selves as well as by the People.
This was the partiality, this degrading of the Bishops, a thing so wholsom in the State, and so Orthodoxal in the Church both ancient and reformed; which the King rather then assent to, will either hazard both his own and the Kingdomes ruin, by our just defence against his force of armes, or prostrat our consciences in a blind obedience to himself, and those men whose superstition Zealous or unzealous would inforce upon us an Antichristian tyranny in the Church, neither Primitive, Apostolicall, nor more anciently universal, then som other manifest corruptions.
But he was bound besides his judgement by a most strict and undispensable Oath to preserve that Order and the rights of the Church. If he mean the Oath of his Coronation, and that the letter of that Oath admitt not to be interpreted either by equity, reformation, or better knowledge, then was the King bound by that Oath to grant the clergie all those customs, franchises, and Canonical privileges granted to them by Edward the Confessor; and so might one day, under pretence of that Oath, and his conscience, have brought us all again to popery. But had he so well rememberd, as he ought, the words to which he swore, he might have found himself no otherwise oblig'd there, then according to the Lawes of God and true profession of the Gospel. For if those following words, Establish'd in this Kingdome, be set there to limit and lay prescription on the Laws of God and truth of the Gospel by mans establishment, nothing can be more absurrd or more injurious to Religion. So that however the German Emperors, or other Kings have levied all those Warrs on thir Protestant Subjects under the colour of a blind and literal observance to an Oath, yet this King had least pretence of all; both sworn to the Laws of God, and Evangelic truth, and disclaiming, as we heard him before, to be bound by any Coronation Oath, in a blind and brutish formality. Nor is it to be imagin'd, if what shall be establish'd come in question, but that the Parlament should oversway the King, and not he the Parlament. And by all Law and Reason that which the Parlament will not, is no more establish'd in this Kingdom, neither is the King bound by Oath to uphold it as a thing establish'd. And that the King who of his Princely grace, as he professes, hath so oft abolisht things that stood firm by Law, as the Starchamber, & High Commission, ever thought himself bound by Oath to keep them up, because establisht, he who will beleiv, must at the same time condemn him of as many perjuries as he is well known to have abolisht both Laws and Jurisdictions, that wanted no establishment.
Had he gratifi'd, he thinks, their Antiepiscopal Faction with his consent, and sacrific'd the Church government and Revennues to the fury of their covetousness, &c. an Army had not bin rais'd. Whereas it was the fury of his own hatred to the professors of true Religion, which first incited him to persecute them with the Sword of Warr, when Whipps, Pillories, Exiles, and impris'nments were not thought sufficient. To colour which, he cannot finde wherwithall, but that stale pretence of Charles the fifth, and other Popish Kings, that the Protestants had onelyonly an intent to lay hands upon Church-revennues, a thing never in the thoughts of this Parlament, 'till exhausted by his endless Warrupon them, thir necessity seis'd on that for the Common wealth, which the luxury of Prelats had abus'd before to a common mischeif.
His consent to the unlording of Bishops (for to that he himself consented, and at Canterbury the cheif seat of thir pride, so God would have it) was from his firm perswasion of thir contentedness to suffer a present diminution of thir rights. Can any man, reading this, not discern the pure mockery of a Royalconsent, to delude us onelyonly for the present, meaning, it seems, when time should serve, to revoke all: By this reckning his consents and his denials come all to one pass: and we may hence perceav the small wisdom and integrity of those Votes which Voted his Concessions at the Ile of Wight, for grounds of a lasting Peace. This he alleges, this controversie about Bishops, to be the true state of that difference between him and the Parlament. For he held Episcopacy both very Sacred and Divine. With this judgement and for this cause he withdrew from the Parlament, and confesses that some men knew he was like to bring againe the same judgement which he carried with him. A fair and unexpected justification from his own mouth afforded to the Parlament; who notwithstanding what they knew of his obstinat mind, omitted not to use all those means and that patience to have gain'd him.
As for Delinquents, he allowes them to be but the necessary consequences of his & their withdrawing and defending. A pretty shift to mince the name of a delinquent into a necessary consequent: what is a Traitor but the necessary consequence of his Treason, what a Rebell, but of his Rebellion? From this conceit he would inferr a pretext onelyonly in the Parlament to fetch in Delinquents, as if there had indeed bin no such cause, but all the Delinquency in London Tumults. Which is the overworn theme, and stuffing of all his discourses.
This he thrice repeates to be the true State and reason of all that Warr and devastation in the Land, and that of all the Treaties and Propositions offer'd him, he was resolv'd never to grant the abolishing of Episcopal, or the establishment of Presbyterian Government. I would demand now of the Scots and Covnanteers (For so I call them as misobservers of the Covnant) how they will reconcile the preservation of Religion and their liberties and the bringing of delinquents to condign punishment, with the freedom, honour and safety of this vow'd resolution here, that esteems all the Zeale of thir prostituted Covnant no better then a noise and shew of pietie, a heat for Reformation, filling them with prejudice and obstructing all equality and clearness of judgment in them. With these principles who knows but that at length he might have come to take the Covnant, as others, whom they brotherly admitt, have don before him; and then all, no doubt, had gon well, and ended in a happy peace.
His prayer is most of it borrow'd out of David; but what if it be answerd him as the Jewes, who trusted in Moses, were answerd by our Saviour. There is one that accuseth you, eev'n David whom you misapply.
He tells God that his Enemies are many, but tells the people, when it serves his turn, they are but a faction of some few, prevailing over the Major part of both Houses.
God knows he had no passion, designe or preparation to imbroyle his Kingdom in a civill Warr. True; for he thought his Kingdom to be Issachar a strong Ass that would have couch'd downe betweene two burd'ns, the one of prelatical superstition, the other of civil tyrannie: but what passion and designe, what close and op'n preparation he had made, to subdue us to both these by terror and preventive force, all the Nation knows.
The confidence of som men had almost perswaded him to suspect his own innocence. As the words of Saint Poul had almost perswaded Agrippa to be a Christian. But almost in the work of repentance is as good as not at all.
God, saith he, will find out bloody and deceitfull men, many of whom have not liv'd out half thir days. It behoov'd him to have bin more cautious how he tempted Gods finding out of blood and deceit, till his own yeares had bin furder spent, or that he had enjoy'd longer the fruits of his own violent Counsels.
But in stead of wariness, he adds another temptation, charging God, To know that the chief designe of this Warr was either to destroy his Person or to force his judgement. And thus his prayer from the evil practice of unjust accusing men to God, arises to the hideous rashness of accusing God before Men to know that for truth, which all Men know to be most fals.
He praies That God would forgive the people, for they know not what they doe. It is an easie matter to say over what our Saviour said; but how he lov'd the People, other Arguments then affected sayings must demonstrat. He who so oft hath presum'd rashly to appeale the knowledge and testimony of God, in things so evidently untrue, may be doubted what beleif or esteem he had of his forgiveness, either to himself, or those for whom he would so fain that men should heare he pray'd.