already made," as being not bound to pass any new, "if his reason bids him deny." And so may infinite mischiefs grow, and he with a pernicious negative may deny us all things good, or just, or safe, whereof our ancestors, in times much differing from ours, had either no foresight, or no occasion to foresee; while our general good and safety shall depend upon the private and overweening reason of one obstinate man, who, against all the kingdom, if he list, will interpret both the law and his oath of coronation by the tenour of his own will. Which he himself confesses to be an arbitrary power, yet doubts not in his argument to imply, as if he thought it more fit the parliament should be subject to his will, than he to their advice; a man neither by nature nor by nurture wise. How is it possible, that he, in whom such principles as these were so deep rooted, could ever, though restored again, have reigned otherwise than tyrannically?

He objects, "That force was but a slavish method to dispel his error." But how often shall it be answered him, that no force was used to dispel the error out of his head, but to drive it from off our necks? for his error was imperious, and would command all other men to renounce their own reason and understanding, till they perished under the injunction of his allruling error.

He alleges the uprightness of his intentions to excuse his possible failings, a position false both in law and divinity; yea, contrary to his own better principles, who affirms in the twelfth chapter, that "the goodness of a man's intention will not excuse the scandal and contagion of his example." His not knowing, through the corruption of flattery and court-principles, what he ought to have known, will not excuse his not doing what he ought to have done: no more than the small skill of him, who undertakes to be a pilot, will excuse him to be misled by any wandering star mistaken for the pole. But let his intentions be never so upright, what is that to us? what answer for the reason and the national rights, which God hath given us, if having parliaments, and laws, and the power of making more to avoid mischief, we suffer one man's blind intentions to lead us all with our eyes open to manifest destruction?

And if arguments prevail not with such a one, force is well used; not "to carry on the weakness of our counsels, or to convince his error," as he surmises, but to acquit and rescue our own reason, our own consciences, from the force and prohibition laid by his usurping error upon our liberties and understandings.

"Never any thing pleased him more, than when his judgment concurred with theirs." That was to the applause of his own judgment, and would as well have pleased any self-conceited man.

"Yea, in many things he chose rather to deny himself than them." That is to say, in trifles. For "of his own interests" and personal rights. he conceives himself "master." To part with, if he please; not to contest for, against the kingdom, which is greater than he, whose rights are all subordinate to the kingdom's good. And "in what concerns truth, justice, the right of church, or his crown, no man shall gain his consent against his mind." What can be left then for a parliament, but to sit like images, while he still thus either with incomparable arrogances assumes to himself the best ability of judging for other men what is truth, justice, goodness, what his own and the church's right, or with unsufferable tyranny restrains all men from the enjoyment of any good, which his judgment, though erroneous, thinks not fit to grant them; notwithstanding that the law and his coronal oath requires his undeniable assent to what laws the parliament agree upon?

"He had rather wear a crown of thorns with our Saviour." Many would be all one with our Saviour, whom our Saviour will not know. They who govern ill those kingdoms which they had a right to, have to our Saviour's crown of thorns no right at all. Thorns they may find enow of their own gathering, and their own twisting; for thorns and snares, saith Solomon, are in the way of the froward: but to wear them, as our Saviour wore them, is not given to them, that suffer by their own demerits. Nor is a crown of gold his due, who cannot first wear a crown of lead; not only for the weight of that great office, but for the compliance which it ought to have with them who are to counsel him, which here he terms in scorn "An imbased flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of any factions," meaning his parliament; for the question hath been all this while between them two. And to his parliament, though a numerous and choice assembly of whom the land thought wisest, he imputes, rather than to himself, "want of reason, neglect of the public, interest of parties, and particularity of private will and passion ;" but with what modesty or likelihood of truth, it will be wearisome to repeat so often.

He concludes with a sentence fair in seeming, but fallacious. For if the conscience be ill edified, the resolution may more befit a foolish than a Christian king, to prefer a self-willed conscience before a kingdom's good; especially in the denial of that, which law and his regal office by oath bids him grant to his parliament and whole kingdom rightfully demanding. For we may observe him throughout the discourse to assert his negative power against the whole kingdom; now under the specious plea of his conscience and his reason, but heretofore in a louder note; "Without us, or against our consent, the votes of either or of both houses together, must not, cannot, shall not.' Declar. May 4, 1642.

With these and the like deceivable doctrines he leavens also his prayer.

VII. Upon the Queen's Departure.

To this argument we shall soon have said; for what concerns it to us to hear a husband divulge his household privacies, extolling to others the virtues of his wife? an infirmity not seldom incident to those who have least cause. But how good she was a wife, was to himself, and be it left to his own fancy; how bad a subject, is not much disputed. And being such, it need be made no wonder, though she left a protestant kingdom with as little honour as her mother left a popish.

That this "is the example of any protestant subjects, that have taken up arms against their king a protestant," can be to protestants no dishonour; when it shall be heard, that he first levied war on them, and to the interest of papists more than of protestants. He might have given yet the precedence of making war upon him to the subjects of his own nation, who had twice opposed him in the open field long ere the English found it necessary to do the like. And how groundless, how dissembled is that fear, lest she who for so many years had been averse from the religion of her husband, and every year more and more, before these disturbances broke out, should for them be now the more alineated from that, to which we never heard she was inclined? But if the fear of her delinquency, and that justice which the protestants demanded on her, was any cause of her alienating the more, to have gained her by indirect means had been no advantage to religion, much less then was the detriment to lose her further off. It had been happy if

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his own actions had not given cause of more scandal to the protestants, than what they did against her could justly scandalize any papist.

Them who accused her, well enough known to be the parliament, he censures for "men yet to seek their religion, whether doctrine, discipline, or good manners;" the rest he soothes with the name of true English protestants, a mere schismatical name, yet he so great an enemy of schism.

He ascribes "rudeness and barbarity, worse than Indian," to the English parliament; and "all virtue" to his wife, in strains that come almost to sonneting how fit to govern men, undervaluing and aspersing the great council of his kingdom, in comparison of one woman! Examples are not far to seek, how great mischief and dishonour hath befallen nations under the government of effeminate and uxorious magistrates; who being themselves. governed and overswayed at home under a feminine usurpation, cannot but be far short of spirit and authority without doors, to govern a whole

nation.

"Her tarrying here he could not think safe among them, who were shaking hands with allegiance, to lay faster hold on religion ;" and taxes them of a duty rather than a crime, it being just to obey God rather than man, and impossible to serve two masters: I would they had quite shaken off what they stood shaking hands with; the fault was in their courage, not in their cause.

In his prayer he prays, that the disloyalty of his protestant subjects may not be a hinderance to her love of the true religion; and never prays, that the dissoluteness of his court, the scandals of his clergy, the unsoundness of his own judgment, the lukewarmness of his life, his letter of compliance to the pope, his permitting agents at Rome, the pope's nuncio, and her jesuited mother here, may not be found in the sight of God far greater hinderances to her conversion.

But this had been a subtle prayer indeed, and well prayed though as duly as a Paternoster, if it could have charmed us to sit still, and have religion and our liberties one by one snatched from us, for fear lest rising to defend ourselves we should fright the queen, a stiff papist, from turning protestant! As if the way to make his queen a protestant, had been to make his subjects more than halfway papists.

He prays next," that his constancy may be an antidote against the poison of other men's example." His constancy in what? Not in religion, for it is openly known, that her religion wrought more upon him, than his religion upon her; and his open favouring of papists, and his hatred of them called puritans, (the ministers also that prayed in churches for her conversion, being checked from court,) made most men suspect she had quite perverted him. But what is it, that the blindness of hypocrisy dares not do? It dares pray, and thinks to hide that from the eyes of God, which it cannot hide from the open view of man.

VIII. Upon his Repulse at Hull, and the Fate of the Hothams.

HULL, a town of great strength and opportunity both to sea and land affairs, was at that time the magazine of all those arms, which the king had bought with money most illegally extorted from his subjects of England, to use in a causeless and most unjust civil war against his subjects of Scotland. The king in high discontent and anger had left the parliament, and was gone towards the north; the queen into Holland, where she pawned and

set to sale the crown jewels; (a crime heretofore counted treasonable in kings;) and to what intent these sums were raised, the parliament was not ignorant. His going northward in so high a chafe they doubted was to possess himself of that strength, which the storehouse and situation of Hull might add suddenly to his malignant party. Having first therefore in many petitions earnestly prayed him to dispose and settle, with consent of both houses, the military power in trusty hands, and he as oft refusing, they were necessitated by the turbulence and danger of those times, to put the kingdom by their own authority into a posture of defence; and very timely sent Sir John Hotham, a member of the house, and knight of that county, to take Hull into his custody, and some of the trained bands to his assistance. For besides the general danger, they had, before the king's going to York, notice given them of his private commissions to the earl of Newcastle, and to Colonel Legg, one of those employed to bring the army up against the parliament; who had already made some attempts, and the former of them under a disguise, to surprise that place for the king's party. And letters of the Lord Digby were intercepted, wherein was wished, that the king would declare himself, and retire to some safe place; other information came from abroad, that Hull was the place designed for some new enterprise. And accordingly Digby himself not long after, with many other commanders, and much foreign ammunition, lauded in those parts. But these attempts not succeeding, and that town being now in custody of the parliament, he sends a message to them, that he had firmly resolved to go in person into Ireland, to chastise those wicked rebels, (for these and worse words he then gave them,) and that towards this work he intended forthwith to raise by his commissions, in the counties near Westchester, a guard for his own person, consisting of 2000 foot, and 200 horse, that should be armed from his magazine at Hull. On the other side, the parliament, foreseeing the king's drift, about the same time send him a petition, that they might have leave for necessary causes to remove the magazine of Hull to the Tower of London, to which the king returns his denial; and soon after going to Hull attended with about 400 horse, requires the governor to deliver him up the town whereof the governor besought humbly to be excused, till he could send notice to the parliament, who had intrusted him; whereat the king much incensed proclaims him traitor before the town walls, and gives immediate order to stop all passages between him and the parliament. Yet himself dispatches post after post to demand justice, as upon a traitor; using a strange iniquity to require justice upon him, whom he then waylaid, and debarred from his appearance. The parliament no sooner understood what had passed, but they declare, that Sir John Hotham had done no more than was his duty, and was therefore no traitor.

This relation, being most true, proves that which is affirmed here to be most false; seeing the parliament, whom he accounts his "greatest enemies," had "more confidence to abet and own" what Sir John Hotham had done, than the king had confidence to let him answer in his own behalf.

To speak of his patience, and in that solemn manner, he might better have forborne ; "God knows," saith he," it affected me more with sorrow for others, than with anger for myself; nor did the affront trouble me so much as their sin." This is read, I doubt not, and believed: and as there is some use of every thing, so is there of this book, were it but to show us, what a miserable, credulous, deluded thing that creature is, which is called the vulgar; who, notwithstanding what they might know, will believe such vainglories as these. Did not that choleric and vengeful act of proclaiming him traitor before due process of law, having been convinced

so late before of his illegality with the five members declare his anger to be incensed? doth not his own relation confess as much? and his second message left him fuming three days after, and in plain words testifies "his impatience of delay" till Hotham be severely punished, for that which he there terms an insupportable affront.

Surely if his sorrow for Sir John Hotham's sin were greater than his anger for the affront, it was an exceeding great sorrow indeed, and wonderous charitable. But if it stirred him so vehemently to have Sir John Hotham punished, and not at all, that we hear, to have him repent, it had a strange operation to be called a sorrow for his sin. He who would persuade us of his sorrow for the sins of other men, as they are sins, not as they are sinned against himself, must give us first some testimony of a sorrow for his own sins, and next for such sins of other men as cannot be supposed a direct injury to himself. But such compunction in the king, no man hath yet observed; and till then his sorrow for Sir John Hotham's sin will be called no other than the resentment of his repulse; and his labour to have the sinner only punished, will be called by a right name, his revenge.

And the hand of that cloud, which cast all soon after into darkness and disorder," was his own hand. For assembling the inhabitants of Yorkshire and other counties, horse and foot, first under colour of a new guard to his person, soon after, being supplied with ammunition from Holland, bought with the crown jewels, he begins an open war by laying siege to Hull: which town was not his own, but the kingdom's; and the arms there, public arms, bought with the public money, or not his own. Yet had they been his own by as good right as the private house and arms of any man are his own; to use either of them in a way not private, but suspicious to the commonwealth, no law permits. But the king had no propriety at all, either in Hull or in the magazine: so that the following maxims, which he cites "of bold and disloyal undertakers," may belong more justly to whom. he least meant them. After this he again relapses into the praise of his patience at Hull, and by his overtalking of it seems to doubt either his own conscience or the hardness of other men's belief. To me, the more he praises it in himself, the more he seems to suspect that in very deed it was not in him; and that the lookers on so likewise thought.

Thus much of what he suffered by Hotham, and with what patience; now of what Hotham suffered, as he judges, for opposing him: "he could not but observe how God not long after pleaded and avenged his cause." Most men are too apt, and commonly the worst of men, so to interpret and expound the judgments of God, and all other events of Providence or chance, as makes most to the justifying of their own cause, though never so evil; and attribute all to the particular favour of God towards them. Thus when Saul heard that David was in Keilah, "God," saith he, "hath delivered him into my hands, for he is shut in." But how far that king was deceived in his thought that God was favouring to his cause, that story unfolds; and how little reason this king had to impute the death of Hotham to God's avengement of his repulse at Hull, may easily be seen. while Hotham continued faithful to his trust, no man more safe, more successful, more in reputation than he: but from the time he first sought to make his peace with the king, and to betray into his hands that town, into which before he had denied him entrance, nothing prospered with him. Certainly had God purposed him such an end for his opposition to the king, he would not have deferred to punish him till then, when of an enemy he was changed to be the king's friend, nor have made his repentance and amendment the occasion of his ruin. How much more likely is it, since

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