and as free from danger of relapse into popery, as Amsterdam herself: And must I, unhappy I, be lacerated and torn in pieces thus for shadows and ceremonics? I know there is a clashing betwixt prerogative and privilege, but I must put them in mind of the misfortune that befel the flock of sheep and the bell-wether, whereof the first fed in a common, the latter in an inclosure, and thinking to break into one another's pasture (as all creatures naturally desire change) and being to pass over a narrow bridge, which severed them, they met in the middle, and jostled one another so long, till both fell into the ditch. And now that I have begun, I will warn them by another fable of the Spanish mule, who having, by accident, gone out of the great road, and carried her rider thorough a bye path upon the top of a huge steep rock, stopped upon a sudden, and being not able to turn and go backward, by reason of the narrowness of the path, nor forward, in regard of a huge rocky precipice, she gently put one foot behind the other, and recoiled in that manner, until she had found the great road again.

I desire my high council to consider, that the royal prerogative is like the sea, which, as navigators observe, what it loseth at one time, or in one place, gets always in some other; I desire my dear king to consider, that the privilege of parliament, the laws and liberties of the subject, is the firmest support of his crown; that his great council is the truest glass wherein he may discern his people's love, and his own happiness; it were wisdom that both did strike sail in so dangerous a storm, to avoid shipwreck; I am loth to say, what consultations, what plots and machinations are fomenting and forging abroad against me, by that time I have enfeebled and wasted myself, and lost the flower of my best children in these woeful broils. Methinks I spie the Jesuit sitting in his cell, and laughing in his sleeve at me, and crying out, The devil part the fray, for they do but execute my designs.

Oh! I feel a cold qualm come over my heart, that I faint, I can. speak no longer; yet I will strain myself to breathe out this one invocation, which shall be my conclusion:

Sweet peace, most benign and amiable Goddess, How comes it to pass that thou hast so abandoned earth, and, taking thy flight to heaven, as once Astræa did, dost reject the sighs and sacrifices of poor mortals? Was that flaming usher of God's vengeance, which appeared six and twenty years since in the heavens, the herald that fetched thee away? For ever since poor Europe hath been harrassed, and pitifully rent up and down with wars, and now I am become the last scene. Gentle peace, thou which goest always attended on by plenty and pleasure; thou which fillest the husbandman's barns, the grasier's folds, the tradesman's shop, the vintner's cellars, the lawyer's desk, the mer- chant's magazines, the prince's treasury, How comes it to pass that thou hast given up thy throne to Bellona, that all-destroying fury? Behold how my plundered yeoman wants hinds and horses to plow up my fertile soil; the the poor labourer, who useth to mingle the morning dew with his anheled sweat, shakes at his work for fear of pressing; the tradesman shuts up his shop, and keeps more holidays than willingly he would; the merchant walks to the Exchange only to learn news, not.

to negotiate. Sweet peace, thou which wast used to make princes courts triumph with tilt and tournaments, and other gallantries, to make them receive lustre by foreign ambassadors; to make the arts and sciences flourish; to make cities and suburbs shine with goodly structures; to make the country ring with the huntsman's horn, and the shepherd's pipe: How comes it to pass that blood-thirsty discord now usurps thy place, and flings about her snakes in every corner? Behold my prince's court is now full of nothing but buff-coats, spanners, and musquet-rests; the country ecchoes with nothing but with the sound of drums and trumpets. Hark how pitifully my lions roar, how dejectedly my roses aud flower-de-luces hang down their heads, what doleful strains my harp gives.

O consider my case, most blissful queen; descend, descend again in thy ivory chariot; resume thy throne, crown thy temples with thy wonted laurel and olive, bar up Janus's gates, and make new halcyonian days to shine in this hemisphere; dispel those clouds which hover betwixt my King and his highest council, chace away all jealousies and umbrages of mistrust, that my great law-making court be forced to turn no more to polemical committees, and to a council of war (unless it be for some foreign conquest) but that they may come again to the old parliamentary road, to the path of their predecessors, to consult of means how to sweep away those cobwebs that hang in the courts of justice, and to make the laws run in their right channel; to retrench excessive fees, and find remedies, for the future, that the poor client be not so peeled by his lawyer, and made to suffer by such monstrous delays, that one may go from one tropick to another, and cross the equinoctial twenty times, before his suit be done; that they may think on a course to restrain gold and silver from travelling without license, with other staple commodities, and to punish those that transport hides for calves skins; to advance native commodities and manufactures; to balance and improve trade, and settle it so, that it may stand upon its own bottom, and not by any accidental ways, as, of late years, a glut of trade was cast upon me by the wars betwixt France and the house of Austria, and others.

That this trade of mine, my chiefest sinew, be not cast into the hands of aliens, who eat me out, in many places, in my own commodities; that it be prevented hereafter, that one be not permitted to ingross and ingulph all, but that my trade and wealth may, by some wholesome policy, be diffused up and down my cities in a more equal distribution; that they may advise of a way to relieve the orphan, who suffers more for his minority in me, than any where else; that the poor insolvent subject be not so buried alive, and made to rot in prison, notwithstanding his apparent disability, whereas, were he abroad, he might be useful to the commonwealth some way or other, and come haply, afterwards, to an ability to pay; to regulate the business of drained lands, which, well managed, would tend very much both to inlarge and inrich my quarters; to secure the dominion of my seas, the fairest flower of my crown, which is now almost quite lost; to preserve my woods, whereof, if this course hold, there will hardly be found, in some places, enough to make a tooth-pick; to settle the revenues, and supply the wants of my crown; for the wants of the crown, and the grievances of the subject, have been always used to go hand in hand in my parliaments. And,

VOL.V.

F f

now that my neighbour princes, especially France and Spain, have, of late years, enhanced the revenue royal, at least, to the third part more than it was, it were a disparagement to me, that my king should not bear up in equal proportion, and point of greatness, this way, considering that he hath more of the royal stem to maintain, than any of his progenitors ever had. Lastly, That they may settle a way to regulate all exorbitant fancies of novelists, in the exercise of holy religion: Where there is no obedience, subordination, and restrictive laws, to curb the changeable humours and extravagancies of men, there can be no peace or piety: If the fire be not kept within the tunnel of the chimney, and that some be appointed to sweep down the soot (which may be done otherwise than by shooting up of musquets) the whole house will be in danger of burning.

Oh me! I feel the pangs of death assail me, let some good body go toll the bell; and, as one of my Kings, the night before he was slain in New Forest, for the expiation of his father's sacrilege, did dream, that a cold wind did pass through his bowels; so, methinks, I feel a bleak cold northern blast blowing upon me, which I fear will make an end of me: It is a miracle if I escape, it is only the high hand of Providence can preserve me. If I and my monarchy miscarry, I desire that my epitaph may be written (in regard I know him to have been, a long time, not only sensible, but a sharer with me, in point of suffering) by my dearly beloved child,

To the discerning reader.

JAMES HOWELL.

HE, that with a well-weighed judgment observeth the passions of this discourse, must needs conclude, that the author, besides his own hard condition, hath a deep sense of the common calamities of this country in general, which makes him break out into such pathetick expressions. And, because he might do it with more freedom, and less presumption, he makes England herself to breathe out his disordered passions. We know a mother hath a prerogative by nature to speak home unto her children, and sometimes in a chiding way, though with tears in her eyes, to give them advice. The same doth England in this discourse, but with all the indulgence and indifferency that may be to both parties. Therefore the author humbly hopes, that no exception, much less any offence, will be taken at her complaints, or counsel.

J. H.

MOCK-MAJESTY;

OR,

THE SIEGE OF MUNSTER,

Being a true story of those fine things, wherewith King John Becock, at first a botcher of Leyden by profession, and his companions the anabaptists, pleased themselves, after they were become masters of that city. You shall here likewise have the issue of the whole mockshow.

Quidam, ut imperium subvertant, libertatem proferunt; si subverterint, ipsam aggredientur.

Malignitati falsa species libertatis inest.

C. TACITUS.

Idem, Histor. Lib. i,

ELEUTHEROPOLI, ANNO 'ANABAITIETOMANI'AX, C. XIIX.

Imprimatur, James Cranford.

London, printed for J. S. and L. C. 1644. Quarto, containing thirty-two pages.

To the worshipful Mr. Richard Lithgold and Mr. John Child, bailiffs of the ancient corporation of Kingston upon Thames: For their endea vour for the publick good: For their vigilancy in their place and office: Especially, for the assistance and encouragement of their Minister, in preaching the word, and suppressing novel fancies:

This is dedicated,

Willingly, deservedly.

To the intelligent reader, baptised or rantised.

THOU must excuse me for this pretty new stamped word. It is pity but it should signify something in English. Whether it do or no, it is not a week sincel first met with it, and that in a way of scorn, and contempt, of the baptism of our church. He that goes about to naturalise it, and make it a denizen, is one that takes upon him also to question the truth of that relation, which we have in Sleidan's commentaries, concerning the tumultuous carriage of the Anabaptists in Germany, as himself speaks; making the author thereof, for differing opinions sake in matter of religion, to make no conscience of violating that sacred rule, which directs and binds every noble historian. That he dare speak nothing false, nor yet conceal any

thing that is true. Not a little troubled to see so injurious and false an imputation laid upon the truest history, that ever was written since the Acts of the Apostles; I was the more incited to communicate again to the publick view, and that in a language which we all can understand, that part thereof, which concerns those tumults more especially; and I do look for better grounds, for the confuting thereof, than such weak surmises and exceptions, that he was a contrary-minded historian; or that it is not lawful to believe an history, from the mouth, or pen, of an enemy. More Christian and rational charity, I am sure, hath been observed to direct the souls and actions, even of heathen men themselves. And I forbear not to make use of St. Paul's question therein: Is he therefore become your enemy, because he speaks the truth? As for our author, he hath as faithfully, as ever did any, observed what the learnedest of the Jews requires in a good historian: To relate nothing, which he could not maintain from his particular and certain knowledge thereof, by personal employment in the action; or else had not received it from the hands of such, whose truth ought not to be called into question. What, in this respect, is objected against him by Matthæus Dresserus, upon the bare word, and assertion, of his friend, Christoph Carlevilius, hath as much weight in it, as Mr. Blackwood's surmises. And of what spirit Dresserus was, learned men, who have perused his books, certainly cannot be ignorant. Only I am sorry to see any reformer join, or, at least, agree with so great a stickler for the see of Rome; and that in a censure against a protestant, of such known piety and integrity. It is hard to gainsay what the noon-day looks upon and witnesses: And now to deny what our fore-fathers, and all Christendom, well-near took notice of, with no less wonder than shame, were to endeavour to swagger truth out of the world. The great respect and entertainment, which Sleidan had here, when he was ambassador to the court of England in the general name of all the protestants of Germany, shall be both a testimony of his prudence, faithfulness, and other abilities in publick affairs; and also an assurance, that this Táxi, or fragment, of that his most excellent history, shall find welcome with us in an English, though somewhat a coarser dress. How sacred and venerable he esteemed truth to be, and how religious a thing he accounted it to swerve in the least matter, from the nice observing of it, if any man be not Christian enough to have charity to believe the man himself herein, others then in this case shall more than abundantly witness it. Thuanus, Beza, &c. Papists, Calvinists, Lutherans, and men of what religion soever, that are not yet more blinded by faction, than led by reason, will give satisfaction in this belief, even to such as are extremely scrupulous. And if all these will not work in Mr. Blackwood a belief of Sleidan's truth, in respect of this relation, then let his own name-sake, and countryman, and perhaps kinsman, Adam Blackwood, a very learned writer, tell the story; and what both his credit and judgment was, concerning the same. Now you must pardon him, if he do perchance

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