coaches, crying for peace; upon this we wrote a note to Captain Harvey, subscribed by the twenty deliverers, and by three of them delivered to him, wherein we expressed our thanks for his courtesy shewed to us: And that we were informed, that divers, who pretended to be of our mind, tarried behind, we know not for what design, and that, if they did any action which was unlawful, we disclaimed it; desiring to steer all our actions by the known laws of God and man; and therefore, if any thing were done to the contrary, we desired it might be suppressed, and that it might not be a scandal to our intentions, nor a hinderance to the answer of our petition.

Which we presented to the captain, who did accept it, and approve of our carriage, and behaviour therein.

This was the passage of that day.

On Tuesday, the twenty appointed to deliver the petition met, and went to the house with it, and while they were waiting at the door for admittance, there was one in a minister's habit, did with much boldness and confidence, but withal, as falsly and causelesly, affirm to some lords of the house, that we intended to plunder houses in Coventgarden, aud that some of our company motioned it; which seemed very strange to us, knowing it to be altogether false. But yet upon some examination of the matter, it fell out, that some such words had fallen from a soldier, not of our company, perhaps incited to it, who, as we are credibly informed, is now in custody for it. And the informer hereof, being convinced by his own conscience, and our arguments, did at last recant it, and desire our favourable opinion of him.

Some other false suggestions were urged against us, and our petition, by some either mis-informed, or ill-affected persons. But it pleased God to make them appear, to the honourable house, to be false and frivolous.

But after all these winds and storms, came a still voice, and gave us admittance to the lords, who being entered, delivered our petition. And the Earl of Manchester declared to us, that the house was content to accept of our petition, and that they would give us their answer in due time.

From thence we went to the honourable house of commons, where we found a most ready, and favourable, and for aught we could conceive, a general consent to accept of our petition. And after reading thereof Mr. Speaker did declare, That the pleasure of the house was to accept our petition, and that they would take it into their serious consideration.

We returned our humble thanks, and departed.

We desire now to clear ourselves from many false aspersions that are cast upon us. Concerning the matter of our petition, it being in substance for nothing but peace, and aiming at the advancement of God's glory, and the quiet of the church and state, it is, we conceive, good and lawful, yet there want not those who speak against the very subject of it, peace. But we wonder not much at them, they being such as are made compleat soldiers on the sudden, and suck their whole subsistence, and fix their hopes to repair their breaches and decays, upon the ruin of others; fearing that the settling of our trades will be

the decay of theirs. And to leave nothing unattempted which may dis courage us, and others, from prosecuting hereof, they have studied new sophistry, to prove peace to be no peace; and under pretence, that we peace-petitioners, as they mockingly call us, do oppose truth, they do indeed beat down both. Whereas any man, that is not purblind with prejudice and faction, may discern that the parliament, the supreme court of judicature, and center of wisdom and piety, will never consent to a peace, that shall war with truth, they being twins of the commonwealth, and inseparable, And we should argue ourselves very unadvised, which therein we hope we are not, to petition for a thing, which no colour of reason tells us we shall obtain.

And for those compleat soldiers, whose very prayers, if they use any, are but alarms to battle, they must give us leave, though, we hope, not without ground, as they do, to pass our censure upon them, and therefore we are bold to tell them, we think they lay their foundation for war, on these two grounds, which they make use of for reasons, Dulce bellum inexpertis, et dulce lucrum expertis. But the time may come, that they may find it better to hearken to the blessed accents of peace, than to have bullets whisper destruction in their ears.

And, though we for several considerations were not, or not suffered to be, of that number, who have exposed their persons to the fury of war, yet, as they bleed outwardly, we bleed within for the distempers of this church and state; and, to shew our ardent zeal for the good of both, we dare banish his soul, whose blood shares of so much cowardice, to retreat at the thought of death, if it might conduce to a happy union of the King and parliament, and the welfare of this late flourishing nation.

Concerning our manner of delivery of our petition, it was generally conceived to be, as we hope, civil, humble, and warrantable; striving, what in us lay, the appearance of tumults, mutinies, force, or violence, habiting ourselves with no weapons offensive or defensive, but our innocence, and the uprightness of our designs, that all occasion of offence might be taken off.

Our number is not certainly known to us, but, though great, it is warranted, as we under correction conceive, both by precept and precedent. The honourable Mr. Nathaniel Fynes, upon the like occasion, having delivered, in answer to the Lord Digby's speech, That a multitude, being grieved, may petition, and that it is fit for all subscribers to be present, lest their hands be supposed counterfeit. And the lords and commons were pleased to declare, in their remonstrance of the nineteenth of May, That the number makes not an assembly unlawful, but when the end or manner of their carriage makes it so; and that they knew no reason, why it should be more faulty in the citizens to come to the parliament, than the resort of great numbers every day in the term, to the ordinary courts of justice.

We confess, as some have objected, there are some clerks and journeymen amongst us, but, being young men, they come under the name of petitioners. Besides, the one being generally scholars, and seen in the laws, giving great sums of money to their masters, and men's sons of good rank, and living by peace, and the other waiting for peace,

being newly come to provide for themselves, we conceive are as much concerned herein as the rest.

Nor are we of the ribaldry of the city (as some blackmouths have uncharitably belched out against us) yet, in such a multitude, the city being exhausted of many of our fellows, it is not to be expected that all should be wise, learned, nor rich; nor can we see any reason why a poor or illiterate man, being injured, should not seek for redress of his grievances, as well as a rich or learned.

And, though a multitude, we humbly conceive ourselves no tumults. As for that miscarriage at Whitehall gate, if any were, tho' greater have been than that is reported to be: We gave no direction for doing it, nor do we commend, must less justify it. But, however, we hope, that particular crimes shall not be imputed to a general cause, nor hinder a general good: Nor if the major part of them, that accompanied us, had committed any outrages, in regard they had divested themselves of their power, and laid it on the twenty, who are the representative body of the petitioners, it would be but hard justice to make them liable to the offences of others, nor ought it to be, we hope, at least, in a candid, or but indifferent construction, a scandal upon the petitioners, or crime upon the petition.

Concerning our preposterous delivery of the petitions, we desire the houses favourable construction; for, in that we presented it first to the house of lords, it was not for want of due honour or respect to the house of commons, but our want of experience in parliament-courses; which we hope may satisfy that honourable house.

All which we thought good to declare, that the world may know, that endeavouring for peace is a work acceptable, we hope, to 'God, his Majesty, the parliament, and kingdom; though, we believe, some, But we not altogether for a good conscience's sake, do oppose us. esteem their words as no slander, because they are nothing else: And, that posterity may know, that we, by seeking peace, are servants, as to private and particular men, so to the general and publick good.

A SHORT VIEW OF THE

LIFE AND DEATH OF GEORGE VILLIERS,

DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

Written by Sir Henry Wotton, Knight, late Provost of Eaton College. London, Printed for William Sheares, 1642. Quarto, containing thirty pages.

I

DETERMINE to write the life, and the end, the nature, and the fortunes of George Villiers, late Duke of Buckingham, which yet I have not undertaken out of any wanton pleasure in mine own pen; nor,

truly, without often pondering with myself before-hand what censures I might incur; for I would not be ignorant, by long observation, both abroad and at home, that every where all greatness of power and favour is circumvested with much prejudice. And that it is not easy for writers to research with due distinction, as they ought, in the actions of eminent personages, both how much many have been blemished by the envy of others, and what was corrupted by their own felicity, unless, after the period of their splendor, which must needs dazzle their beholders, and, perhaps, oftentimes themselves, we could, as in some scenes of the fabulous age, excite them again, and confer a while with their naked ghosts. However, for my part, I have no servile or ignoble end in my present labour, which may, on either side, restrain or embase the freedom of my poor judgment; I will, therefore steer as evenly as I can, and deduce him from his cradle through the deep and lubrick ways of state and court, till he was swallowed in the gulf of fatality. I find him born in the year of our Saviour, 1592, on the 28th of August, at Brooksby in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had chiefly continued about the space of four-hundred years, rather without obscurity, than with any great lustre, after they had long before been seated in Kinalton in the county of Nottingham; he was the third son of George Villiers, knight, and Mary, late Countess of Buckingham, and daughter to Anthony Beaumont, of Coleorton, Esq; names on either side well known of ancient extraction. And yet I remember there was one, who, in a wild pamphlet which he published, besides other pitiful malignities, would scarce allow him to be a gentleman. He was nurtured, where he had been born, in his first rudiments, till the years of ten; and, from thence, sent to Billisden school in the same county, where he was taught the principles of musick, and other slight literature, till the thirteenth of his age, at which time his father died. Then his beautiful and provident mother, for those attributes will not be denied her, took him home to her house at Goodby, where she had him in especial care; so as he was first, as we may say, domestick favourite: But finding him, as it should seem, by nature, little studious and contemplative, she chose rather to endue him with conversative qualities and ornaments of youth, as dancing, fencing, nnd the like; not, without perchance, even then, though far off, at a courtier's life: To which lessons he had such a dexterous proclivity, as his teachers were fain to restrain his forwardness, to the end that his brothers, who were under the same training, might hold pace with him. About the age of eighteen he travelled into France, where he improved himself well in the language, for one that had so little grammatical foundation, but more in the exercises of that nobility, for the space of three years; and yet came home in his natural plight, without affected forins, the ordinary disease of travellers. After his return, he passed again one whole year, as before, at Goodby, under the wing and counsels of his mother; and then was forward to become a suitor, at London, to Sir Roger Ashton's daughter, a gentleman of the bedchamber to King James, and master of his robes; about which time, he falls into intrinsical society with Sir John Graham, then one of the

gentlemen of his Majesty's privy-chamber; who, I know not upon what luminaries he espied in his face, dissuaded him from marriage, and gave him rather encouragement to wooe fortune in court, which advice sunk well into his fancy; for, within a while, the King had taken, by certain glances (whereof the first was at Apthorpe in a progress) such liking of his person, that he resolved to make him a master-piece, and to mould him, as it were, platonically to his own idea. Neither was his Majesty content only to be the architect of his fortune, without putting his gracious hand likewise to some part of the work itself: Insomuch as it pleased him to descend and to veil his goodness, even to the giving of his aforesaid friend, Sir John Graham, secret directions how, and by what degrees, he should bring him into favour. But this was quickly discovered by him, who was then, as yet, in some possession of the King's heart. For there is nothing more vigilant, nothing more jealous, than a favourite, especially towards the waining-time and suspicion of satiety, so as many arts were used to discuss the beginnings of new affliction (which lie out of my road, being a part of another man's story.) All which notwithstanding, for I omit things intervenient, there is conveyed to Mr. Villiers an intimation of the King's pleasure to wait, and to be sworn his servant: And, shortly after, his cup-bearer at large; and, the summer following, he was admitted in ordinary. After which time favours came thick upon him (liker main showers, than sprinkling drops or dews) for, the next St. George's Day, he was knighted, and made gentleman of the King's bed-chamber; and, the very same day, had an annual pension given him, for his better support, of one-thousand pounds out of the Court of wards. At New Year's-tide following, the King chose him master of the horse. After this, he was installed of the most noble order. And, in the next August, he created him Baron of Whaddon, and Viscount Villiers. In January of the same year, he was advanced Earl of Buckingham, and sworn here of his Majesty's privy-council, as if a favourite was not so before; the March ensuing, he attended the King into Scotland, and was likewise sworn a counsellor in that kingdom, where (as I have been instructed by unpassionate men) he did carry himself with singular sweetness and temper, which I held very credible, for it behoved him, being new in favour, and succeeding one of their own, to study a moderate stile amongst those generous spirits. About New-year's-tide, after his return from thence (for those beginnings of years were very propitious unto him, as if Kings did choose remarkable days to inaugurate their favours, that they may appear acts as well of the times, as of the will) he was created Marquis of Buckingham, and made lord admiral of England, chief justice in Eyre of all the parks and forests on the south-side of Trent, master of the King's Bench office (none of the unprofitablest places), head steward of Westminster, and constable of Windsor castle.

Here I must breathe a while, to satisfy some that, perhaps, might otherwise wonder at such an accumulation of benefits, like a kind of embroidering, or listing of one favour upon another. Certainly the hearts of great princes, if they be considered, as it were, in abstract, without the necessity of states and circumstances of time, being besides VOL. V.

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