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The honours and offices whereof, they had distributed amongst themselves, and their own dependents. But having brought the King (though, as it chanced, by other hands) to the end [to which] they aimed, and being intent on nothing more than the dividing of that rich prey amongst themselves, gratifying one another with huge sums of money, and growing fat on the revenues of the crown and the lands of the church, and guarded as they thought by invincible armies, they were upon a sudden scattered like the dust before the wind, turned out of all, and publicly exposed to contempt and scorn.* All which was done so easily, with so little noise, that the loss of that exorbitant power did not cost so much as a broken head, or a bloody nose; in pur

*This wonderful change was indeed the Lord's doing and it was marvellous in the eyes of the whole nation. That great and wise man, the Earl of Clarendon, alludes to this singular interposition of Providence in the following pious strain: "The easy and glorious reception of the King, in the manner that hath been mentioned, without any other conditions than what had been frankly offered by himself in his Declaration and letters from Breda; the Parliament's casting themselves in a body at his feet, in the minute of his arrival at Whitehall, with all the professions of duty and submission imaginable; and no man having authority there, but they who had either eminently served the late King, or who were since grown up out of their nonage from such fathers, and had thoroughly manifested their fast fidelity to his present Majesty; the rest who had been enough criminal, shewing more animosity towards the severe punishment of those who having more power in the late times had exceeded them in mischief, thau care for their own indemnity: This temper sufficiently evident, and the universal joy of the people, which was equally visible, for the total suppression of all those who had so many years exercised tyranny over them, made most men believe both abroad and at home, that God had not only restored the King miraculously to his throne, but that he had, as he did in the time of Hezekiah, prepared the people, for the thing was done suddenly, (2 Chron. xxix, 36.) in such a manner, that his authority and greatness would have been more illustrious, than it had been in any of his ancestors. And it is most true, and must never be denied, that the people were admirably disposed and prepared to pay all the subjection, duty and obedience, that a just and prudent king could expect from them, and had a very sharp aversion and detestation of all those who had formerly misled and corrupted them; so that, except the General, who seemed to be possessed entirely of the affection of the army, and whose fidelity was now above any misapprehension, there appeared no man whose power and interest could in any degree shake or endanger the peace and security the King was in; the congratulations for his return being so universal from all the counties of England, as well as from the Parliament and city; from all those who had most signally disserved and disclaimed him, as well as from those of his own party and those who were descended from them: Insomuch as the King was wont merrily to say, as hath been mentioned before, that it could be 'nobody's fault but his own, that he had stayed so long abroad, when all 'mankind wished him so heartily at home.'

The brief remark which he immediately subjoins, is likewise worthy of consideration: "It cannot therefore but be concluded by the standers by, and the spectators of this wonderful change and exclamation of all degrees of men, that there must be some wonderful miscarriages in the State, or some unheard of defect of understanding in those who were trusted by the King in the administration of his affairs; that there could in so short a time be a new revolution in the general affections of the people, that they grew even weary of that happiness they were possessed of and had so much valued, and fell into the same discontents and murmurings which had naturally accompanied them in the worst times."

chasing whereof, they had wasted so many millions of treasure, and more than one hundred thousand lives."

Dr. Heylin has stated the period when his Majesty was taken into custody by the army, in whose power he remained a year and a half before he was executed. Another old historian thus relates that sad catastrophe and some of the causes which preceded it:

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Every public action of the King or his ministers being misinterpreted, combinations were held between the factious English and discontented Scots; whose begging-time being over at Court, they bethink of coming to plunder the country. The faction gives out, that the King had deserted the Protestants of the Palatinate and France, when the truth is, they had deserted him. The Bishops in their visitations were every where opposed, and the troublesome taught how to elude all church-obligations by common law, By a general odium cast upon all acts of government, and a perverse spirit of discontent, fears and jealousies, raised throughout the three kingdoms, and vehemently possessing all sorts of people; by the necessities of the King and some foreign troubles; by the treachery of some that had the management of the affairs of Scotland; that which was at first but a n opinion, after that a book-controversy, (and which never durst look beyond a motion, a petition, a supplication, a conference, a disputation, and some private murmurings at best,) became now

a war.

، The cause whereof, on the one side, was an old schism maintained; men's private interests promoted; rebellion, that sin like witchcraft; the overthrow of all laws and government; the ruin of learning, religion and order; the piecing-up of broken estates by rapine and plunder; an ambition to attain to those honours and preferments in troublesome times, that they despaired of in those more quiet, as derived on persons of more worth and deserving; a canting pretence for liberty of conscience and of the subject, that proved at last nothing but licentiousness; the umbrage of the public good, when it appeared at last but the project of private persons, who no sooner overthrew the govern ment but they quarrelled one with another; till at last, instead of one good government, we had so many that we had none at all; and, instead of an excellent king, all the blood, treasures and pretences ended in a sordid, base, bloody, tyrannical and upstart usurper, raised out of the meanest of the people; a revenge of some particular and personal wrongs, with the ruin of the public;* the setting up of sects, echisms and heresies upon

"Riddles! Cromwell, Whalley, Ireton, &c. and the army, weep and grieve, (but the hyæna weeps when it intends to devour,) at the hard conditions the houses put upon him; and the houses are displeased with the army's hard usage of him: And yet both ruin him, the one bringing him to the block and holding him there by the hair of the head, and the other cutting off his head. The Scots durst not trust the cavaliers with him; nor the

the subversion of the established doctrine and discipline; a perpetual disgrace and dishonour to christianity and the English nation, occasioning such burdens and mischiefs as the child unborn may rue; burdens and mischiefs conveyed from them to late posterity: The desolation of the country; the ruin of gallant churches, castles and cities; the undoing of some thousands of families; the blood of 80,000 killed on both sides and on all occasions; an unnatural division and animosity begun even among relations, that is like to last from generation to generation; abominable canting; taking of the name of God in vain ; hypocrisy; perjury against the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, the protestation, yea, against the covenant which they took themselves, and all the obligations they owed to God or man; the mocking of God by fasts, prayers, and seeking of his face to wicked and vile purposes; the making of him the author of the abominations he abhors; the making of religion only a cloak to villainies; and all the ordinances of it, especially sermons and sacraments, the ministries of horrid undertakings; filling pulpits with such nonsense and lies as all ears that heard tingled; such encouragement to loose fancies and vile opinions, to enlarge and increase their party, as left not unshaken any foundation in the whole compass of Christian religion; a sacrilege unheard of, that was to swallow up all bishops' and deans' and chapters' lands, all tithes and ministers' maintenance, all universities and public schools, all hospitals, colleges and charitable foundations; a rapine that carried away all the crown revenue, and sent a great royal family a-begging; devoured the estates of above 12000 noblemen, gentlemen and persons of eminent quality; and indeed left no man so much propriety as to say, This is mine, there being no other law or judicature than that arbitrary Houses, the Scots: nor the army, the Houses; nor the Junto, all the army; nor N. the Junto, being never safe till he put his finger into the royal neck, to see, after execution, whether the head were really severed from the body. All the quarrel was, that the Cavaliers kept the King from the Parliament; and the meaning of this, it seems, was, that they kept him from the block.

"A Prince they destroyed that they durst not despise, all the grandees in the army not daring to own the least murtherous thoughts towards him publicly, when they set agitators, that is, two active soldiers out of every regi ment in the army, (now modelled into such desperate sects and villainies,) to consult about the horrid fact in private, and to draw a bloody paper, as the Agreement of the People, which was but a conspiracy of traitors; Cromwell assuring the King, as he had a soul,that he should be restored; and his son Ireton at the same time drawing up a remonstrance that he should die. The army treat him like a prince; and that they might deceive his devout soul the more securely, allow him the service of his chaplains, and the liberty of his conscience, (the greatest enjoyments left him in this world,) with a design the more successfully to use him like a traitor. Ah brave prince! that none durst have abused, had they owned what they designed; whom the Houses had saved, had they not been cajoled by the army; and the army, had it not been cajoled by the Houses. The King granted too much,' saith Sir Harry Vane to him at the Isle of Wight; and too little,' saith the same man to the Houses; and the King must die, when, whatsoever they asked, they meant his LIFE. LLOYD'S Worthies.

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one of the sword; carrying on of the public good till the nation was beggared; a crying up of the power of parliaments, till the House of Lords was laid by, and the house of Commons, (consisting of almost five hundred gentlemen,) reduced to fifty or sixty mechanics and poor fellows, who are turned out by their own army as a pack of knaves and fools; a pretence to make the king glorious till he was murdered, and fighting for him against evil counsellors till they cut off his head,-the best counsellor he had ;* the rendering of a nation, once the envy and terror of the

* ،، The Prefacer owns, That travelling has hitherto been so mischievous, 'that it is well it has been so little in fashion. Such worthy men as are employ'ed abroad may bring home generous notions of liberty, and make admirable remarks on the contrary state which being inculcated from the pulpit, and enforced by the learned arguments of able divines, must needs over'throw those servile opinions, which of late have been too much backed by God's authority, almost to the ruin of a free people.' Here we have before us a true platform of our author's grand design: together with an exact delineation of the manner and conduct of the villainy through all its steps aud gradations. This was the darling method which the Rabbis of the Separation used heretofore, to new-plant the gospel and to pull down the High Places of the church and monarchy together. The project was first set on foot by English and Scotch travellers; who, having unhappily sojourned awhile at Frankfort, and in the strange land of Geneva, became bewitched at length with the charms of a new discipline: Upon a return home, they made such a pother with fantastical notions of liberty, and such pert remarks upon the admirable constitutions of the English Church, that the whole nation soon rang with the jingle of reformation. Innovations, grievances and disobedience to rulers, were inculcated from the pulpit, and the multitude rendered uneasy both to their governors and themselves, by calumnies, scruples, and such like arguments of good and able divines. The authority of magistrates was blasted and run down by the fair and specious pretensions of a free people; and Christian loyalty, patience and submission were quite dashed out of countenance by the horrible outcry of dangerous and slavish opinions. Never was any black and infamous project so graduated along with good names; nor the power of godliness so stifled with inward suggestions of the Spirit.

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"The ring-leaders of the faction drew the rabble after them with the hallowed whistle of conscience and inspiration; with prayers unmerciful, elevation of hands and voices, and eves lifted up to heaven: while their hearts were fixt on sacrilege and rapine (that inheritance of the saints) and other creature comforts here below. The tickling of wanton and itching ears was called touching the conscience ;' and he was thought the fittest champion to sacrifice Antichrist to the beasts of the field and fowls of the air, that could boldly and fluently utter the most edifying nonsense. They caught the simple, even all the sons and daughters of the separation, with the witchcraft of rebellion at last; as once a pied piper drew children after him, with the unaccountable strains of magic and enchantments. And after they had run through the various stages of heterodoxy and schism, liberty and insurrection, prophaneness and blasphemy, plunder and devastation; they completed their reformation in the ruin of the church and state, the depression of the nobility, selling the gentry for slaves, the exaltation of sovereign mob, and the murder of the best of princes.

"I do verily believe, (and surely the black annals of those unhappy times have put it beyond all question,) that if all the religious barbarities and executions which were acted by those who are now sainted up to everlasting rest, and, as it were, conjured to heaven by the republican chaplains of those times; if all the consequences too, under which the whole reformation groans at this very day, could be represented at once unto the view; it would be the most sad and astonishing sight, the most tremendous object of horror and

world, now its scorn and contempt; and Englishmen, once the glory of Europe, now its shame for doing that which Turks and Pagans and the barbarous abhorred, crying out, You fight and judge your King! Not to say any thing of the general horror and consternation that seized all the christian world upon that horrid conspiracy. The letting loose of all the Jesuitical principles that had troubled the world, but were never before owned by things that would be called Protestants. As,

"That success is a sign of God's blessing and presence with any people in any undertaking.

"That nothing is to be established in public that goeth against any man's opinion, humour or conscience in private.

"That if any court, judicature, form of worship or law be abused, then it must be presently laid down and not used.

"That any thing that hath been used by the Papists, or that is but pretended to be Popish, must be abrogated: A principle that the Jesuits, observing our blind zeal against Popery, have suggested, to overthrow all religion under pretence of avoiding Popery.

"That dominion is founded upon grace, and that the wicked have no right to any thing that they enjoy.

"That the law of the land was not made for the righteous but for sinners: so they abused a place of scripture that sounds that way.

compassion, that ever eyes beheld; and would easily convince us, that our travellers and reformers did not copy the example of HIM who was meek and lowly, and who came, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them." The Commonwealth's Man Unmasked.

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In the last paragraph, the reader will perceive an allusion to Richard Baxter's SAINTS' EVERLASTING REST, which he composed" in quarters far from home," when, as a republican chaplain, he was cast into extreme languishment by the sudden loss of about a gallon of blood." In that curious and (otherwise) very edifying treatise, he has given us several touches of his party principles, which it would, for many reasons, have been more decorons to omit in a work devoted to piety. In one passage, when speaking of heaven, he says: "I think, Christian, this will be a more honourable assembly than you ever here beheld; and a more happy society than you were ever of before. Surely Brook, and Pym, and Hampden, and White, &c. are now members of a more knowing, unerring, well-ordered, right-aiming, self-denying, unanimous, honourable, triumphant senate, than this from whence they were taken is, or ever parliament will be. It is better to be door-keeper to that assembly, whither Twisse, &c. are translated, than to have continued here the moderator of this. That is the true Parliamentum beatum, the blessed parliament; and that is the only church that cannot err."-In another description of "the city of rest," he tells us: "Subscription and conformity no more urged; silencing and suspending are there more than suspended; there are no bishops or chancellors' courts; no visitations nor high commission judgments; no censures to loss of members, perpetual imprisonment or banishment." In a comparison on the same subject he says: "O the sad and heart-piercing spectacles that mine eyes have seen in four years' space! In this fight a dear friend fell down by me; from another, a precious christian brought home wounded or dead: scarce a month, scarce a week without the sight or noise of blood. Surely there is none of this in heaven. Our eyes shall then be filled no n ore, nor our hearts pierced, with such fights as at Worcester, Edgehill, Newbury, &c." Other passages of a similar aspect and tendency occur in different parts of that treatise.

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