The Life and Reign of King Charles, Title page – Preface

The Life and Reign of King Charles · Title page – Preface

THE LIFE AND REIGNE OF King CHARLS, Or the Pseudo-Martyr discovered. With a late Reply to an Invective Remonstrance against the Parliament and present Government: Together with some Animadversions on the strange contrariety between the late Kings publick Declarations, Protestations, Imprecations, and his Pourtracture, compared with his private Letters, and other of his Expresses not hitherto taken into common Observation.

Istud est sapere, non solùm ea quae ante Pedes videre, sed futura prospicere. Seneca.

London, Printed for W. Reybold at the signe of the Unicorn in Pauls Church-yard 1651.

The Preface.

TO write the Lives of Princes, in another world, and fallen, through their owne frailties, or by the influence of others counsells from the high pitch of Soveraignty (for regality is a slippery precipice) in charity may be allowed a faire and favourable memoriall; but for a King falling by the high hand of Justice, not for common faults and frailties (incident to humane nature) but presumptuous sins, sins of lood, perfidie, cruelty, rapine, wilfully perpetrated in the face of God and man, and without any remorse, to pursue the destruction not of one, but three flourishing Kingdoms, such desperate and violent Princes, deserve no other favour than to be set out to the life of their Tyrannous actions; though in pitty to him, who hath already paid his debt to Nature, and his offences, much of his exorbitant government and irregular motions might, and doubtlesse would have been concealed, more tenderly intreated, and himselfe sufferered to rest where he is, in the silent grave, had not that madnesse of his defeated surviving party by their indefatigable instigations, given frequent occasion of taking over the ashes of him, who living (without injury to truth and his memory it may be said) that rather than to have failed in the accomplishing of his designs, (had it layn in in his power) he would have set the World on fire. It was an unhappy and no iningenious expression of **Balzack.him, who hath written it, That there were a sort of men borne to the world, not so suffer it to be at rest; a sentence not more true, than made good in this most unhappy King, had this been put in addition (neither himselfe to take his owne rest, and sleep (as he could not) quietly and peaceably like other men.)

I am not ignorant what senslesse maxims and ridiculous principles have gotten credit in the World (as undoubted Oracles indisputably to be obeyed) as that de mortuis nil nisi bona, but by no means to tread on the sacred Urne of Princes, though living never so vicious and exorbitant, as if death had bequeathed unto them a supersedeas for the covering over their faults and licencious reignes, and to close them up in the Coffin of Oblivion, with a ne plus ultra, not to admit of the least mention that they had done amisse, when many thousands of oppressed and desolated families must stand mute, whilest the malicious partizans of an irregular King, take a liberty to themselves, to vindicate his indefensible actions, and not so content, but asperse and scandalise those that opposed him in his cruelties, and likewise would perswade others to adore him for a Saint, and an innocent martyr, whose Fathers, Brothers, and Friends, have been most barbarously slain to fulfill the lust and pleasure of one wilfull man: if to speake truth in due season, or to be the faithfull witnesse to convey the verity of things past to the present and after times, be a crime unpardonable, or an injustice done to the memory of the dead, the Malignant generation of this age may on the same reason charge it as a fault on those holy and inspired pen-men of the sacred Scriptures, which have recorded and left to after ages the wicked reignes of Kings, leaving an everlasting staine and taint on their memories; how prophane would it be to tax that holy man (the meekest of men) Moses, for leaving to posterity the fratricide of Cayne? the mockery of that wicked Cam? what madnesse to accuse Samuel, and the Authors of the Chronicles of the Kings of Iuda and Israel, in leaving to after ages the Tyranny of Saul, in murthering at once eighty of Gods priests? that presumptuous sin and perfidious fact of David, in plotting the death of Vriah, that he might enjoy his Wife which lay in his bosome? Rehoboams Tyrannies? the Cruelties and Idolatries of Ieroboam, who stands branded, as the Sonne of Nebat, which made Israel to sin? with what face can it be imputed as an incharity to Tacitus, Livy, Florus, and others of the Roman Historians, for inserting in their histories, the rape of Lucretia by that Tyrant Tarquin? the Tyrannies of Tiberius and his privado Scianus? those of Nero, that Monster of Princes, and the condemnation of him by the Senate? To omit Forraign examples, what offence in reason can be charged on Matthew Paris, Ho…eden, Sir Th. Moor, Daniell, and infinite others, of our owne Historians, for describing the vices and tyrannies of our owne Kings both ancient and moderne? What injury have they committed in their Registers, in setting downe that William the first of our Norman Kings, was a known Bastard of Robert Duke of Normandy, an usurper, and from which spurious root all our Kings since his usurpation derive their deified titles, and that most of his descendants ruled tyrannically, and that amongst them all King Iohn was one of the most subtill, persideous and bloody Princes that history hath afforded? That Henry the third his sonne (admitted by the indulgence of the Barons and People in hopes of his better Government) proved as oppressive and bloody to the Nation as any of the rest: That Richard the third in murthering his Brothers sonnes, and usurping the Crowne, was more wicked than the worst? That Henry the seventh was the descendant of a Bastard sonne of Iohn of Gaunt, begotten on Catherine Swinford another mans Wife, though legitimated by act of Parliament, yet had no other title to the Crowne but that of his Sword? That six of his descendants, and of our last Princes, claym their rights to the Crowne from his spurious stock (as if it had been in the fate of the English Nation, to be perpetually chaind up to the irregular domination of a race of Kings, transmitted from one bastardized roote to another? That Henry the eighth was a most imperious and bloody prince, the pattern and Idea of all Tyranny, and one that neither spared any man in his wrath, or woman in his Sir Walter Raleigh.lust? That his daughter Queen Mary was the spurious issue begotten on Catherine of Austria his elder brother Arthurs Wife, that Alecto, superstitious and bloody Princesse; That King Iames, and our late King Charls, were discendants from the same Stock of Henry of Richmond, the one who most of all our Kings secretly, cunningly, and underhand indeavoured, and laid the plot to undermine the freedoms of the english nation, and King Charls to have followed the design with more plots, wiles, and stratagems, than any of our former Kings, raised more treasure by undue exactions, and spilt more innocent blood than all of the Norman Kings before him?

If the premisses are evident truths, as they cannot be denyed; why then should they be concealed, and wrapt up from the sight of the world? being so pertinent to be left as Looking glasses for their Successours to behold the deformed faces of their Ancestors, so fit to be made known to the deluded number of the people, baffled and befool'd with flam's and Fig-leaves? what injury then or injustice hath the Parliament done to the Nation, in rescuing their Liberties out of the hand of a King, which nothing would content, but their Invassalage? what have they done more in cutting off him with his Posterity (to whom he had entayled his designes) than necessity hath inforc'd them to do, in preservation of the Nation from that inevitable inthralldome, which eminently was like, and would have befallen the universall people, had they not taken away the Effects by the Cause, and by that Law of Necessity, to which all others are subservient? And have they done more than the Romans of old have left in president, in the case of Tarquinius, and the expulsion of his Posterity for lesse Tyranny, and to change the Kingly Government into a Republick, when as this most willfull Prince stood so constantly fix'd to his depraved Principles, that no perswasions of a Court of Parliament, no reason but his will could prevaile, or content him, but to be the absolute Master of such an immensity of power, as that at his own time and pleasure might enable him, not only to destroy himself, but to overpower the whole Kingdom, which to his uttermost he endeavoured, and to wade all over in blood to the accomplishment, as 'tis most manifest by all his actions, and the sequell of his owne story? And have not the SCOTS on the same Reasons of State, in divers presidents, acted the like on their Kings, when they found them perverse and intractable to any reason, as tis manifest in the fatall examples of Dardanus their 20. King from Fergus, in Romacus their 36 King, and on Alpinus their 68 King, all three of them beheaded for their Cruelties and Tyrannies; besides twenty more of their Kings, either put to death or deposed for their exorbitant Governments? and hath the Parliament in this necessitated change of the late Kingly domination into a Common-wealth done more than the Hollanders were compell'd to attempt, and happily accomplisht in the very like case, when as on their many (though fruitlesse, Petitions to Philip the second of the invading of their ancient Immunities, and slaughtering of 100000 of the Natives by Don Alvares de Toledo, and others of his Vice-Royes, and themselves utterly deprived of all hopes of redresse of their grievances, but only to make head against his Tyranny? This question I take the liberty to move to the most rigid Royalist; by what right, equity, or Law of God or man, is any Nation in the World bound up to such a blind and unnaturall obedience, as to be deprived of self-defence, and to sit still without seeking their own preservations, whilst an irregular King shall either cut their throats, inslave, or denude them of their Freedomes, when as both Scripture and the Law of Nature and Nations allows it them? and that Royalists themselves, and the most learned Jurists maintain and concur in one joynt opinion, that Subjects in such cases, both by Gods Law and that of Nature, may defend themselves, contra immanem saevitiem, against barbarous hostility, as **Barclay adver. Monarch. lib. 3. cap. 8.Barclay confesseth, & **Grotius de jure belli & pacis, lib. 1. cap. 4.Hugo Grotius avoucheth it for Law, si Rex hostili animo in totius populi exitium feratur, amittit Regnum, If a King in a hostile way shall attempt to destroy his people, he loseth his Kingdome, and this stands with infallible reason; but leaving this Argument as that which already is in the way of decifion by the sword, which when we have all said what can be alleged, is the best title of all Kings and Common-wealths, and the same on which all or most of the Kings in the world have founded their powers and Soveraignties; What a strange passion then and madnesse possesses his surviving party, which during the life time and height of their masters power could not with all their united forces, their many plots and continued practices prevaile against the Parliament, or enable him to attaine to any peece of his ends, whose boundlesse ambition, lead him (as we may safely beleeve) to fight as well against Heaven as his own Subjects, and saw it not, or would not, but pursued his designs so long as any power or hopes prompted him to beleeve, that happily in the end he might be the Conquerour, but but missing of all his aims, and himself in another world, that there should still remain so many of his defeated partizans, which out of an old and inbred malice have found out a way (as they vainly conceive) how to be revenged on their Conquerors, (is the wonder of the times) by presenting his Book, with his picture praying in the Frontispiece, purposely to catch and amuse the people, magnifying all his misdeeds for pious actions, canonizing him for a Saint, and idolizing his memory for an innocent Martyr, an imposture without other parallell than that of Mahomet; considerations which for the generall satisfaction, and for the better discovery of the truth of all affairs between the King and Parliament, have principally induced me to take (in brief) the true dimensions of this Sainted King and innocent Martyr, and to pull off that false vizzard wherewith his juggling partie hath deckt his Effigies, and presented him to the publick view, for the most pious Prince of this age, that so the people may behold him in his native complexon; true it is some other important reasons have moved me to undertake this task, as having seen the many poor, easie, and beleeving people of this Nation, too long mislead, and cosened out of their understanding by his usuall protestations, which God willing shall be made evidently cleer by the Kings own hand writing, and by the self same artifices wherewith he had so often deluded and prevailed on the belief of too many of his own party pretending to knowledge above the ordinary rank of the vulgar, other reasons have moved me hereunto, as for satisfaction of some obstinate Royalists to whom I have wisht well, and with whom I have had severall disputes on such particular subjects, as may be seene in the subsequent reply; ranckt betweene the breviary of the Kings reign, and the observations on severall of his own Letters and Expresses; and lastly to confute a new sprung up scandall most ungratefully and maliciously raised against the Parliament; viz. That the present change of the Government both Civill and Ecclesiasticall, the cutting off the King and his Posterity, were Plots and Contrivances of a longer date and standing than this Parliament, though pursued and accomplished by a party yet sitting at Westminster: this being the scope and method of the whole, I have thought it not impertinent in preparation thereunto here to adjoyn some thing of the place of his birth, and manner of his breeding; That he was born in Scotland, 1600. and remained there untill the second year of his Fathers reigne, needs no further attestation; That on the ceasing of the sicknesse 1602. at London (for its ominously remarkable, that two most furious plagues immediately followed the very ingresse both of the Father and the Son to their Crowns) under the stile and title of Duke of Yorke, he was conveyed from Edenborough to St. James's known to many yet living; That during his Infancy, then fitter for the oversight of the female sex, than the masculine, there was such an innated, incorrigible, obduracy, and inflexibility in his nature, that his Nurses and those Gentlewomen that attended him could very rarely devise how to please him, much lesse to reclaim that intemperature of his naturall constitution; which as the Gentlewomen themselves have both often related and protested, so are there yet enough alive which will justifie it as a known truth, and of which his mother Queen Anne would often complain, usually calling him her perverse and obstinate Son, and his Brother Prince HENRY, not without a propheticall judgement to befall the Kingdome, in case on King James his Father and his own decease the Crown should descend on him; God knows and I call him to witnesse that I shall not willingly present a syllable to the prejudice of his memory, otherwise then for truths sake (abused) and the generall satisfaction of such as would be rightly informed thereof, having never had any cause given me to write more or lesse than becomes me in sincerity, confessing that considering the distance I stood in to be a pertaker of his secrets, as having been only a poor servant of his Fathers, untill weary of the Court I retired, having seen enough of the vanity thereof, and of both raigns, though on some urgent occasions, in my Addresses to him, I have had the honour of his gracious aspect; and sometimes good words from his own mouth, never any other injury, than in my particular sufferings, involved in the generall calamity proceeding from the late fatall warre, of which I cannot in justice excuse him whose ambition and wilfulness to rule alone, and without controule of any others than hers, which had too long and imperiously overruled him, which the following Animadversions will more amply manifest; Having thus made my Apology, that neither any particular spleen or quarrell to his person hath incensed me to write, as in justice I ought; I come to his education as he arrived to riper years, under the tutorship of Bishops, and men of that Garbe (known to many who they were) how he was seasoned both in Learning and Religion: Its most certain that he attained to some competent measure of literature (for a Prince) and as I have some reason to beleeve suckt in with the most of the Episcopall leven, but as to the Religion wherewith afterward he was seasoned, I am confident he was more beholding to his honest Secretary Mr. Murrey, than to any other of his Prelaticall Tutors, though he after proved (at best) a mere formall Protestant; an enemy to the Puritan party, and a friend to Bishops, as proceeding from the instructions of his own Father, and the influence of his Prelaticall tetinue; Its a known truth, that in the midst of that long, fruitlesse, and restlesse pursute of the old Kings for a marriage with the Infanta, Secretary Murrey who had then the chiefest influence on his Counsells, had privatly diswaded him from any further thought thereof, as a Match which would neither be well pleasing to God, acceptable to the generality of the people, or propitious to the Kingdom, in respect of the disparity of their religions, which so much wrought upon him, what by the Secretaries owne perswasions, and the reading unto him of Mr. De Molins Tractate on the 17 of Deutronomy, De Illegitimes Marages, that he was altogether averted to marry in any papisticall family; insomuch as the old King making diligent inquiry by whose infusions he was so much alienated from the Spanish Match, it was at last found out to be Mr. Murreys workemanship, which cost the honest man the losse of his place, and expulsion the Court: Howsoever the King out of his restlesse desire to match his Son in the House of Austria soone turn'd his affection, and sends him in person attended with the Duke of Buckingham, privately by the way of France, to Madrid; where after an expencefull voyage, and to no other purpose but to his own dishonour, and disgrace to the Prince (after six moneths stay in Spain) he returned to London, the 5 of October following his going from hence, and about 5 moneths after his arrivall the old King dyed at Theobalds, and the Crown descended upon him, which anon we shall see how he managed it: That he had then so much applause and love of the people in generall, even to a kind of veneration, in the hopes that all men conceived of his future Government is known to thousands yet living, and that no Prince sooner lost it, is also not unknown, most men wondering how so suddenly not only the affections of the people were withdrawn from him, but to fall into the generall obloquy, was held by the wisest a kind of Riddle, not suspecting and indeed then not knowing, or not observing the reasons thereof to have arisen from his then present steerage of the Helm, by the only Compasse of the old Kings delineation, whereof more hereafter will appear in his carriage at his first Oxford Parliament; where I must give this caution to the Reader, not to value that late impartiall and flattering Author, Aulicus Coquinariae, neither to give over much credit to King Iames his Court, who in some particulars speakes much more of truth than the other babler, who with no colour at all of sincerity and knowledge of those times talks at randome, palpably and ridiculously rendring King Iames for the only Platonicall, Politick, Peaceable and pious King of his time, a Prince as he would have it beleeved, the Paragon for his wisdome and care, the fruits whereof no rationall man could ever yet discerne, when the plain truth was, and the right measure of his peaceable reigne was well known to all Europe, to be the onelyonly occasion of all the after Wars throughout Germany, and the root of all those of his Successors throughout his Dominions, those in Germany, to the utter undoing of his Son-in-Law the Count Palatyne, and all those Princes which assisted him in the Cause of Bohemia, whilst himself refused, or durst not draw his Sword, through meer fear of offending the SPANIARD in the least punctilio, but sate musing at home how to improve his Soveraignty, to devise projects how to raise moneyes to satiate his needy and greedy Scotch Courtiers, by privy seals, benevolences, sale of Forrest lands, asserts, woods, and Crowne Lands, and to pick quarrels with his Parliaments, and to entaile them to his heirs Generall; his successor proving no ill scholler in putting in practice his Fathers precepts, and for the better invading of the libertyes of the Subjects, to suppresse Parliaments, which never offended him, but in refusing to supply his prodigalities, when himselfe had wasted treble the treasure in an idle Peace, than his predecessor the Queen spent in a continued and furious War, with the greatest Prince of Christendome, and yet to leave him the richest King of the Westerne World, which if the plain truth of the affairs of those times may without offence be made manifest, were the only frutes of his so much magnified and peaceable raigne, for I may in sincerity say it over and over againe, and no other than a knowne truth, that the not drawing of his Sword, in the Count Palatines quarrell, to which he was so often importuned, by most of the Germaine Princes, invited, yea prest by his own Councell of State, yet would he not, but hindered in what possibly he could, those that would and did, to their utter undoing by his many expencefull, and fruitlesse Embasseys, and to the greatning of the Austrian Familie, which had long befoold and baffled him even to the derision and scorne of all the Princes of Europe; as to his Justice of which the Court Cook tattels, the whole Kingdom can witnesse, how he measured it out, by suffering the rigor and uttermost penalty of the Law, to fall on the accessaries in Sir Tho. Overbuties case, and to take the Principalls into his mercy, tis true (not Somerset into his former favour) yet sure we are to stop his mouth from telling of tales, he gave him at once in pure gift so much of the Crowne Lands, as were well worth to be sold 100000 pounds, though it melted away like wax in the Sun, and himselfe to dye a stark begger, and in infamy, and as to that his most excellent chast Lady, and Virgin Bride, let the ghosts of Sir Iames Stuart, Sir George Wharton, and Prince Henry speak, and not him, this is most manifest, that by divine justice, she was knowne to dye living, and of so loathsome a disease, that her own Gentlewomen, have often protested it before many credible witnesses, they could not indure the Chamber where she lay, neither scarce the next adjacent for the horrible stinke that a long time before she expired, issued from her carcase, and polluted the ayre; I could speak much more of the cariage of that foule businesse, and of others, not pertinent to this place, and so can many more persons of honour yet alive, which will tell the tatler to his face that which he hath either with impudence or out of ignorance published; are both false and abominable adulatious, both in reference to the old King, Somerset, and his Lady, and others of that tribe, Sir Walter Rawly, the Archbishop Abbot, and that of the records, on which he would build the fabrick of his untruths, were known forgeryes of their owne making; and as to the Archbishops particular, he comes not near the truth, that honest man alone, as it is well knowne, withstood the King alone and the other Bishops, in their base complyance in that nullity; insomuch that the King took upon him to convince thê said Archbishop in a treatise, dedicated to the unbelieving Thomas, yet to be seene, passages, which as it seems, the talking tatler knew not, neither little of truth, which he assumes to relate, and howsoever he hath farc't up a Pamphlet, as to the matter (happily his own or not) yet in good manners he might have forborne, to make use of another mans phrase, which in divers places of his relation it appears he hath stolen out of the Fragmenta Regalia, though varied to the worse, & by him as much vitiated, as by the printer. But I now both leave him and his theaft, untill I may have the happiness to hear further from him, then doubtlesse I shall not faile to give him a fuller answer; in the mean time I shall advise him to remember, that he which justifieth the wicked, and condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord, a text that will become both of us, to take into our serious consideration, and as I have good reason to believe, best of the two befits himselfe to look to, who takes upon him with such palpable flattery to present King Iames for such a Saint-like Prince, when as had he either knowne a peece of his life and conversation, or the least of his secrets and Counsels (as of those I well know him not to be guilty) surely he would have been ashamed so to have written of a King, who left behind so little evidence of piety, true Religion, temperance, and care of the Subjects welfare, and so much of the structure of absolute Monarchy to his successor, a study to which he had wholy devoted himselfe, and left it to his Sonne as an infelicious legacy, and three Kingdoms destruction, which were without all question, the fruits and effects of his pe ceable reigne. But briefly now to his only Sonne, and the heire of his fathers unhappy peace, and the prosecutor of his owne, his posterities, and the Kingdomes ruine.