cause ye ask amiss." As for the truth and sincerity, which he prays may be always found in those his declarations to the people, the contrariety of his own actions will bear eternal witness, how little careful or solicitous he was, what he promised or what he uttered there.

XII. Upon the Rebellion in Ireland.

THE rebellion and horrid massacre of English protestants in Ireland, to the number of 154,000 in the province of Ulster only, by their own computation; which added to the other three, makes up the total sum of that slaughter in all likelihood four times as great; although so sudden and so violent, as at first to amaze all men that were not accessary; yet from whom and from what counsels it first sprung, neither was nor could be possibly so secret, as the contrivers thereof, blinded with vain hope, or the despair that other plots would succeed, supposed. For it cannot be imaginable, that the Irish, guided by so many subtle and Italian heads of the Romish party, should so far have lost the use of reason, and indeed of common sense, as not supported with other strength than their own, to begin a war so desperate and irreconcilable against both England and Scotland at once. All other nations, from whom they could expect aid, were busied to the utmost in their own most necessary concernments. It remains then that either some authority, or some great assistance promised them from England, was that whereon they chiefly trusted. And as it is not difficult to discern from what inducing cause this insurrection first arose, so neither was it hard at first to have applied some effectual remedy, though not prevention. And yet prevention was not hopeless, when Strafford either believed not, or did not care to believe, the several warnings and discoveries thereof, which more than once by papists and by friars themselves were brought him; besides what was brought by deposition, divers months before that rebellion, to the archbishop of Canterbury and others of the king's council; as the declaration of "no addresses" declares. But the assurance which they had in private, that no remedy should be applied, was, it seems, one of the chief reasons that drew on their undertaking. And long it was before that assurance failed them; until the bishops and popish lords, who, while they sat and voted, still opposed the sending aid to Ireland, were expelled the house.

Seeing then the main excitement and authority for this rebellion must be needs derived from England, it will be next inquired, who was the prime author. The king here denounces a malediction temporal and eternal, not simply to the author, but to the "malicious author" of this bloodshed: and by that limitation may exempt, not himself only, but perhaps the Irish rebels themselves, who never will confess to God or man that any blood was shed by them maliciously; but either in the catholic cause, or common liberty, or some other specious plea, which the conscience from grounds both good and evil usually suggests to itself: thereby thinking to elude the direct force of that imputation, which lies upon them.

Yet he acknowledges, "it fell out as a most unhappy advantage of some men's malice against him:" but indeed of most men's just suspicion, by finding in it no such wide departure or disagreement from the scope of his former counsels and proceedings. And that he himself was the author of that rebellion, he denies both here and elsewhere, with many imprecations, but no solid evidence: What on the other side against his denial hath been

affirmed in three kingdoms, being here briefly set in view, the reader may so judge as he finds cause.

This is most certain, that the king was ever friendly to the Irish papists, and in his third year, against the plain advice of parliament, like a kind of pope, sold them many indulgences for money; and upon all occasions advancing the popish party, and negotiating underhand by priests, who were made his agents, engaged the Irish papists in a war against the Scots protestants. To that end he furnished them, and had them trained in, arms, and kept them up, either openly or underhand, the only army in his three kingdoms, till the very burst of that rebellion. The summer before that dismal October, a committee of most active papists, all since in the head of that rebellion, were in great favour at Whitehall; and admitted to many private consultations with the king and queen. And to make it evident that no mean matters were the subject of those conferences, at their request he gave away his peculiar right to more than five Irish counties, for the payment of an inconsiderable rent. They departed not home till within two months before the rebellion; and were either from the first breaking out, or soon after, found to be the chief rebels themselves. But what should move the king besides his own inclination to popery, and the prevalence of his queen over him, to hold such frequent and close meetings with a committee of Irish papists in his own house, while the parliament of England sat unadvised with, is declared by a Scots author, and of itself is clear enough. The parliament at the beginning of that summer, having put Strafford to death, imprisoned others his chief favourites, and driven the rest to fly; the king, who had in vain tempted both the Scots and the English army to come up against the parliament and city, finding no compliance answerable to his hope from the protestant armies, betakes himself fast to the Irish; who had in readiness an army of eight thousand papists, which he had refused so often to disband, and a committee here of the same religion. With them, who thought the time now come, (which to bring about they had been many years before not wishing only, but with much industry complotting, to do some eminent service for the church of Rome and their own perfidious natures, against a puritan parliament and the hated English their masters,) he agrees and concludes, that so soon as both armies in England were disbanded, the Irish should appear in arms, master all the protestants, and help the king against his parliament. And we need not doubt, that those five counties were given to the Irish for other reason than the four northern counties had been a little before offered to the Scots. The king, in August, takes a journey into Scotland; and overtaking the Scots army then on their way home, attempts the second time to pervert them, but without success. No sooner come into Scotland, but he lays a plot, so saith the Scots author, to remove out of the way such of the nobility there as were most likely to withstand, or not to further his designs. This being discovered, he sends from his side one Dillon, a papist lord, soon after a chief rebel, with letters into Ireland; and dispatches a commission under the great seal of Scotland, at that time in his own custody, commanding that they should forthwith, as had been formerly agreed, cause all the Irish to rise in arms. Who no sooner had received such command, but obeyed, and began in massacre; for they knew no other way to make sure the protestants, which was commanded them expressly; and the way, it seems, left to their discretion. He who hath a mind to read the commission itself, and sound reason added why it was not likely to be forged, besides the attestation of so many Irish themselves, may have recourse to a book, entitled, "The Mystery of Iniquity." Be

sides what the parliament itself in the declaration of "no more addresses" hath affirmed, that they have one copy of that commission in their own hands, attested by the oaths of some that were eye-witnesses, and had seen it under the seal: others of the principal rebels have confessed, that this commission was the summer before promised at London to the Irish com,missioners; to whom the king then discovered in plain words his great desire to be revenged on the parliament of England.

After the rebellion broke out, which in words only he detested but underhand favoured and promoted by all the offices of friendship, correspondence, and what possible aid he could afford them, the particulars whereof are too many to be inserted here; I suppose no understanding man could longer doubt who was "author or instigator" of that rebellion. If there be who yet doubt, I refer them especially to that declaration of July 1643, with that of 66 no addresses" 1647, and another full volume of examinations to be set out speedily concerning this matter. Against all which testimonies, likelihoods, evidences, and apparent actions of his own, being so abundant, his bare denial, though with imprecation, can no way countervail; and least of all in his own cause.

As for the commission granted them, he thinks to evade that by retorting, that "some in England fight against him, and yet pretend his authority. But though a parliament by the known laws may affirm justly to have the king's authority, inseparable from that court, though divided from his person, it is not credible that the Irish rebels, who so much tendered his person above his authority, and were by him so well received at Oxford, would be so far from all humanity, as to slander him with a particular commission, signed and sent them by his own hand.

And of his good affection to the rebels this chapter itself is not without witness. He holds them less in fault than the Scots, as from whom they might allege to have fetched "their imitation ;" making no difference between men that rose necessarily to defend themselves which no protestant doctrine ever disallowed, against them who threatened war and those who began a voluntary and causeless rebellion, with the massacre of so many thousands, who never meant them harm.

He falls next to flashes, and a multitude of words, in all which is contained no more than what might be the plea of any guiltiest offender: He was not the author, because he hath the greatest share of loss and dishonour by what is committed." Who is there that offends God or his neighbour, on whom the greatest share of loss and dishonour lights not in the end? But in the act of doing evil, men use not to consider the event of these evil doings; or if they do, have then no power to curb the sway of their own wickedness: so that the greatest share of loss and dishonour to happen upon themselves, is no argument that they were not guilty. This other is as weak, that "a king's interest, above that of any other man, lies chiefly in the common welfare of his subjects;" therefore no king will do aught against the common welfare. For by this evasion any tyrant might as well purge himself from the guilt of raising troubles or commotions among the people, because undoubtedly his chief interest lies in their sitting still.

I said but now, that even this chapter, if nothing else, might suffice to discover his good affection to the rebels, which in this that follows too notoriously appears; imputing this insurrection to "the preposterous rigour, and unreasonable severity, the covetuous zeal and uncharitable fury of some men;" (these "some men," by his continual paraphrase, are meant the par liament;) and, lastly, "to the fear of utter extirpation." If the whole Irishry VOL. I.

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of rebels had feed some advocate to speak partially and sophistically in their defence, he could have hardly dazzled better; yet nevertheless would have proved himself no other than a plausible deceiver. And, perhaps (nay more than perhaps, for it is affirmed and extant under good evidence, that) those feigned terrors and jealousies were either by the king himself, or the popish priests which were sent by him, put into the head of that inquisitive people, on set purpose to engage them. For who had power "to oppress" them, or to relieve them being oppressed, but the king, or his immediate deputy? This rather should have made them rise against the king, than against the parliament. Who threatened or ever thought of their extirpation, till they themselves had begun it to the English? As for "preposterous rigour, covetous zeal, and uncharitable fury," they had more reason to suspect those evils first from his own commands, whom they saw using daily no greater argument to prove the truth of his religion than by enduring no other but his own Prelatical; and, to force it upon others, made episcopal, ceremonial, and common-prayer book wars. But the papists understood him better than by the outside; and knew that those wars were their wars. Although if the commonwealth should be afraid to suppress open idolatry, lest the papists thereupon should grow desperate, this were to let them grow and become our persecutors, while we neglected what we might have done evangelically to be their reformers: or to do as his father James did, who instead of taking heart and putting confidence in God by such a deliverance as from the powder-plot, though it went not off, yet with the mere conceit of it, as some observe, was hit into such a hectic trembling between protestant and papist all his life after, that he never durst from that time do otherwise than equivocate or collogue with the pope and his adherents.

He would be thought to commiserate the sad effects of that rebellion, and to lament that "the tears and blood spilt there did not quench the sparks of our civil" discord here. But who began these dissensions? and what can be more openly known than those retardings and delays, which by himself were continually devised, to hinder and put back the relief of those distressed protestants? which undoubtedly, had it not been then put back, might have saved many streams of those tears and that blood, whereof he seems here so sadly to bewail the spilling. His manifold excuses, diversions, and delays, are too well known to be recited here in particular, and too many.

But "he offered to go himself in person upon that expedition," and reckons up many surmises why he thinks they would not suffer him. But mentions not that by his underdealing to debauch armies here at home, and by his secret intercourse with the chief rebels, long ere that time every where known, he had brought the parliament into so just a diffidence of him, as that they durst not leave the public arms to his disposal, much less an army to his conduct.

He concludes, "That next the sin of those who began that rebellion, theirs must needs be who hindered the suppressing, or diverted the aids." But judgment rashly given, ofttimes involves the judge himself. He finds fault with those "who threatened all extremity to the rebels," and pleads much that mercy should be shown them. It seems he found himself not so much concerned as those who had lost fathers, brothers, wives, and children by their cruelty; whom in justice to retaliate is not, as he supposes. "unevangelical;" so long as magistracy and war are not laid down under the

*The second edition has "shivering."

gospe If this his sermon of affected mercy were not too pharisaical, how could he permit himself to cause the slaughter of so many thousands here in England for mere prerogatives, the toys and gewgaws of his crown, for copes and surplices, the trinkets of his priests; and not perceive his own zeal, while he taxes others, to be most preposterous and unevangelical? Neither is there the same cause to destroy a whole city for the ravishing of a sister, not done out of villainy, and recompense offered by marriage; nor the same cause for those disciples to summon fire from heaven upon the whole city where they were denied lodging; and for a nation by just war and execution to slay whole families of them, who so barbarously had slain whole families before. Did not all Israel do as much against the Benjamites for one rape committed by a few, and defended by the whole tribe? and did they not the same to Jabesh-Gilead for not assisting them in that revenge? I speak not this that such measure should be meted rigorously to all the Irish, or as remembering that the parliament ever so decreed; but to show that this his homily hath more craft and affectation in it, than of sound doctrine.

But it was happy that his going into Ireland was not consented to; for either he had certainly turned his raised forces against the parliament itself, or not gone at all; or had he gone, what work he would have made there, his own following words declare.

"He would have punished some ;" no question; for some, perhaps, who were of least use, must of necessity have been sacrificed to his reputation, and the convenience of his affairs. Others he "would have disarmed;" that is to say in his own time: but "all of them he would have protected from the fury of those that would have drowned them, if they had refused to swim down the popular stream." These expressions are too often met, and too well understood, for any man to doubt his meaning. By the "fury of those," he means no other than the justice of parliament, to whom yet he had committed the whole business. Those who would have refused to swim down the popular stream, our constant key tells us to be papists, prelates, and their faction; these, by his own confession here, he would have protected against his puritan parliament: and by this who sees not that he and the Irish rebels had but one aim, one and the same drift, and would have forthwith joined in one body against us?

He goes on still in his tenderness of the Irish rebels, fearing lest "our zeal should be more greedy to kill the bear for his skin, than for any harm he hath done." This either justifies the rebels to have done no harm at all, or infers his opinion that the parliament is more bloody and rapacious in the prosecution of their justice, than those rebels were in the execution of their barbarous cruév. Let men doubt now and dispute to whom the king was a friend most his English parliament, or to his Irish rebels.

With whom, that we may yet see further how much he was their friend, after that the parliament had brought them every where either to famine or a low condition, he, to give them all the respite and advantages they could desire, without advice of parliament, to whom he himself had committed the managing of that war, makes a cessation; in pretence to relieve the protestants, "overborne there with numbers ;" but, as the event proved, to support the papists, by diverting and drawing over the English army there, to his own service here against the parliament. For that the protestants were then on the winning hand, it must needs be plain; who notwithstanding the miss of those forces, which at their landing here mastered without difficulty great part of Wales and Cheshire, yet made a shift to keep their own in Ireland. But the plot of this Irish truce is in good part discovered