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whose church is or shall be nearest to the church, or chapel, or other place of publick prayer, where such default shall be made. And, if default shall be made after the first day of December, which shall be in the said year 1643, than any one justice of the peace of the county, city, or town, where such default shall be made, upon information thereof to him to be given, shall cause or procure the premisses to be performed, according to the tenour of this ordinance, at the cost and charges of such person or persons, bodies politick or corporate, or inhabitants in every parish, who are appointed by this ordinance to bear the same.

Provided that this ordinance, or any thing therein contained, shall not extend to any image, picture, or coat of arms in glass, stone, or otherwise, in any church, chapel, church-yard, or place of publick prayer, as aforesaid, set up or graven only for a monument of any king, prince, or nobleman, or other dead person, which hath not been commonly reputed or taken for a saint; but that all such images, pictures, and coats of arms may stand and continue in like manner and form, as if this ordinance had never been made.

JOH. BROWN, Cler. Parliamentorum.

ENGLAND'S TEARS,

For the present wars, which, for the nature of the quarrel, the quality of strength, the diversity of battles, skirmishes, encounters, and sieges, happened in so short a compass of time, cannot, be paralleled by ang precedent age.

Hei mihi, quàm miserè rugit Leo, Lilia languent,

Heu, Lyra, quàm mastos pulsat Hiberna sonos.

Printed at London, according to order, by Richard Heron, 1644. Quarto, containing twenty-two pages.

To my Imperial Chamber, the City of London.

Renowned City,

IF any showers of adversity fall on me, some of the drops thereof must needs dash on thy streets. It is not a shower, but a furious storm, that pours upon me now, accompanied with thunder, and unusual fulgurations. The fatal cloud, wherein this storm lay long ingender ing, though, when it began to condense first, it appeared but as big as a hand, yet by degrees it hath spread to such a vast expansion,

that it hath diffused itself through all my regions, and obscured that fair face of heaven, which was used to shine upon me; if it last long, it is impossible but we both should perish. Peace may, but war must destroy. I sce poverty posting a-pace, and ready to knock at thy gates; that gastly harbinger of death, the pestilence, appears already within and without thy walls; and methinks I spy meagrefaced famine afar off, making towards thee; nor can all thy elaborate circumvallations, and trenches, or any art of enginery, keep him out of thy line of communication, if this hold. Therefore, my dear daughter, think, oh think upon some timely prevention, it is the counsel, and request of

Thy most afflicted mother,

ENGLAND.

OH that my head did flow with waters! Oh that my eyes were limbecks,

I could melt away, and dissolve into tears, more brackish than those seas that surround me! Oh that I could weep myself blind, to prevent the seeing of those mountains of mischiefs, that are like to fall down upon me! Oh that I could rend the rocks that gird me about, and with my ejaculations tear and dissipate those black dismal clouds, which hang over me! Oh that I could cleave the air with my cries, that they might find passage up to heaven, and fetch down the moon, that watry planet, to weep and wail with me, or make old Saturn descend from his sphere, to partake with me in my melancholy, and bring along with him the mournful Pleiades, to make a full concert, and sing Lachrymæ with me, for that woeful taking, that desperate case, that most deplorable condition, I have plunged myself into unawares, by this unnatural self-destroying war, by this intricate odd kind of enigmatical war, wherein both parties are so intangled, like a skein of ravelled silk, that they know not how to unwind and untwist themselves, but by violent and destructive ways, by tearing my intrails, by exhausting my vital spirits, by breaking my very heart-strings to cure the malady! Oh I am deadly sick, and as that famous Chancellor of France spoke of the civil wars of his country, that France was sick of an unknown disease; so, if Hippocrates himself were living, he could not be able to tell the true symptoms of mine, though he felt my pulse, and made inspection into my water, never so exactly; only in the general, he may discover a strange kind of infection, that hath seized upon the affections of my people; but for the disease itself, it will gravel him to judge of it; nor can there be any prediction made of it, it is so sharp, which made some tell me, that I cannot grow better, but by growing yet worse: That there is no way to stanch this flux of blood, but by opening some of the master veins; that it is not enough for me to have drunk so deep of this cup of affliction, but I must swallow up the dregs also!

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Oh, passenger, stop thy pace, and if there be any sparkles of human compassion glowing in thy bosom, stay a while, and hear my plaints, and I know they will not only strike a resentment, but a horror into thee; for they are of such a nature, that they are able to penetrate a breast of brass, to mollify a heart hooped with adamant, to wring tears out of a statue of marble.

I that have been always accounted the Queen of Isles, the Darling of Nature, and Neptune's Minion; I that have been stiled by the character of the first Daughter of the Church,' that have converted eight several nations; I that made the morning beams of Christianity shine upon Scotland, upon Ireland, and a good part of France; I that did irradiate Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, with the light thereof; I that brought the Saxons, with other Germans, high and low, from paganism, to the knowledge of the gospel; I that had the first Christian King that ever was (Lucius) and the first reformed King, Henry the Eighth, to reign over me; I out of whose bowels sprung the first Christian Emperor that ever was, Constantine; I that had five several kings, viz. John King of France, David King of Scotland, Peter King of Bohemia, and two Irish Kings, my captives, in less than one year; I under whose banner that great Emperor Maxamilian took it an honour to serve in person, and receive pay from me, and quarter his arms with mine; I that had the lion rampant of Scotland lately added to fill up my escutcheon, and had reduced Ireland, after so many intermissive wars, to such a perfect pass of obedience; I that, to the wonderment and envy of all the world, preserved my dominions free, when all my neighbour countries were a fire; I that did so wonderfully flourish and improve in commerce, domestick and foreign, by land and sea; I that did so abound with bullion, with buildings, with all sort of bravery that heart could wish; in sum, I that did live in that heighth of happiness, in that affluence of all earthly felicity, that some thought I had yet remaining some ingots of that gold, whereof the first age was made. Behold, I am now become the object of pity to some, of scorn to others, of laughter to all people; my children abroad are driven to disavow me, for fear of being jeered; they dare not own me for their mother, neither upon the Rialto of Venice, the Berle of Augsburgh, the new Bridge of Paris, the Cambios of Spain, or upon the Quays of Holland, for fear of being baffled. Methinks I see my next neighbour, France (through whose bowels my gray-goose wing flew so often) making mouths at me, and saying, That whereas she was wont to be the chief theatre, where Fortune used to play her pranks, she hath now removed her stage hither; she laughs at me, that I should let the common people, and now lately the females, to know their strength so much.

Methinks I see the Spaniard standing at a gaze, and crossing himself to see me so foolish as to execute the designs of my enemies upon myself. The Italian admires to see a people argue themselves thus into arms, and to be so active in their own ruin. The German drinks carouses, that he hath now a co-partner in his miseries. The Swede rejoices, in a manner, to see me bring in a foreign nation to be my champion. The Netherlander strikes his hand upon his breast, and protests, that he wisheth me as well, as once the Duke of Burgundy did France, when

he swore, He loved France so well, that, for one King, he wished she had twenty.

Methinks I see the Turk nodding with his turban, and telling me, that I should thank heaven for that distance which is betwixt us, else he would swallow me up all at one morsel: Only the Hollander, my bosom friend, seems to resent my hard condition; yet he thinks it no ill-favoured sight to see his shops and lombards every-where full of my plundered goods, to find my trade cast into his hands, and that he can undersell me in my own native commodities; to see my gold brought over in such heaps, by those that fly from me with all they have for their security; in fine, methinks I hear my neighbours about me bargaining very hotly for my skin, while, like an unruly horse, I run headlong to dash out my own brains.

O cursed jealousy, the source of all my sorrows, the ground of all my inexpressible miseries! Is it not enough for thee to creep in betwixt the husband and the wife, betwixt the lemon and his mate, betwixt parents and children, betwixt kindred and friends? Hast thou not scope enough to sway in private families, in staple societies and corporations, in commoncouncils, but thou must get in betwixt King and parliament, betwixt the head and the members, betwixt the members amongst themselves? But thou must divide prince and people, sovereign and subject. Avant, avant, thou hollow-eyed, snake-haired monster; hence away into the abyss below, into the bottomless gulf, thy proper mansion; sit there in the chair, and preside over the councils of hell, amongst the cacodamons, and never ascend again to turn my high law-making court into a council of war, to turn my cordials into corrosives, and throw so many scruples into that sovereign physick, which was used to cure me of all distempers.

But when I well consider the constitution of this elementary world, when I find man to be part of it, when I think on those light and changeable ingredients that go to his composition, I conclude, that men will be men while there is a world; and, as long as the moon hath an influxive power to make impressions upon their humours, they will be ever greedy and covetous of novelties and mutation: The common people will be still common people, they will some time or other shew what they are, and vent their instable passions. And when I consider further the distractions, the tossings, the turmoilings, and tumblings of other regions round about me, as well as mine own; I conclude also, that kingdoms, and states, and cities, and all bodies politick, are subject to convulsions, to calentures, and consumptions, as well as the frail bodies of men, and must have an evacuation for their corrupt humours, they must be phlebotomised; I have often felt this kind of phlebotomy; I have had also shrewd purges and pills given me, which did not only work upon my superfluous humours, but wasted sometimes my very vital spirits; yet I had electuaries and cordials given me afterwards, insomuch that this present tragedy is but vetus fabula, novi histriones; it is but an old play represented by new actors, I have often had the like. Therefore let no man wonder at these traverses and humour of change in me. I remember there was as much wondering at the demolishing of my six-hundred and odd monasteries, nunneries, and abbies, for being held to be hives of drones, as there is

now at the pulling down of my crosses, organs, and windows. There was as much wondering when the pope fell here, as now that the prelates are like to fall. The world wondered as much when the mass was disliked, as men wonder now the liturgy should be distasted: And God grant that people do not take at last a surfeit of that most divine ordinance of preaching, for no violent thing lasts long. And, though there should be no satiety in holy things, yet such is the depraved condition of man, he is naturally such a changeling, that the over-frequency and commonness of any thing, be it never so good, breeds, in tract of time, a kind of contempt in him, it breeds a fulness and nauseousness in him.

The first reformation of my church began at court, and so was the more feaseable, and it was brought to pass without a war: The scene is now otherwise, it is far more sanguinary, and fuller of actors; never had a tragedy acts of more variety in so short a time: There was never such a confused mysterious civil war as this; there were never so many bodies of strength on sea and shore, never such choice of arms and artillery, never such a numerous cavalry on both sides, never a greater eagerness and confidence, never such an amphibolous quarrel, both parties declaring themselves for the King, and making use of his name in all their remonstrances to justify their actions: The affection and understandings of people were never so confounded and puzzled, not knowing where to acquiesce, by reason of such countercommands. One side calls the resisting of royal commands, loyalty; the other terms loyalty, the opposing of parliamentary orders and ordinances. Both parties would have peace; the one would have it with honour, the other with truth (and God forbid but both should go together) but, Interea ringor ego, in the mean time I suffer by both, the one taking away what the other leaves; insomuch that whosoever will be curious to read the future story of this intricate war, if it be possible to compile a story of it, he will find himself much staggered, and put to a kind of riddle; for, touching the intricacy of it, touching the strange nature, or rather the unnaturalness of it, it cannot be paralleled by any precedent example: For in my chronicles I am sure no age can match it, as I will make it briefly appear, by comparing it with all the wars that ever embroiled me, which I find to be of three sorts, either by the invasion of foreigners, the insurrection of my commons, or by the confederacy of my peers and princes of the blood.

I will not rake the ashes of antiquity so far as to speak of that deluge of blood I spilt before I would take the Roman legions for my garison; I am loth to set down how the Saxons used me, and how the Danes used them, nor how I had one whole brave race of people, the Picts I mean, quite extinguished in me; I will begin with the Norman expedition, and, indeed, to make researches of matters, before, is but to grope in the dark, but I have authentick annals and records, for things since. The Norman came in, with the slaughter of near upon sixty-eight thousand combatants upon the place, a battle so memorable, that the very ground, which sucked in the blood, retains the name of it, to this day. The Dane not long after struck in to recover his right, with the sacking of my second great City of York, and the firing of her, with the slaughter of three thousand of my children, in one afternoon; yet he was sent

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