he told us, "the Presbyterians took up arms against | to be laughed at and despised, rather than receive a the king, that by them he was beaten, taken captive, serious answer. pro CHAP. XI. and put in prison:" now he says, "this whole doctrine of rebellion is the Independents' principle." O! the faithfulness of this man's narrative! how consistent he is with himself! what need is there of a counter-narrative to this of his, that cuts its own throat? But if any man should question whether you are an honest man or a knave, let him read these following lines of yours: "It is time to explain whence and at what time this sect of enemies to kingship first began. Why truly these rare puritans began in Queen Elizabeth's time to crawl out of hell, and disturb not only the church, but the state likewise; for they are no less plagues to the latter than to the former." Now your very speech bewrays you to be a right Balaam; for where you designed to spit out the most bitter poison you could, there unwittingly and against your will you have nounced a blessing. For it is notoriously known all over England, that if any endeavoured to follow the example of those churches, whether in France or Germany, which they accounted best reformed, and to exercise the public worship of God in a more pure manher, which our bishops had almost universally corrupted with their ceremonies and superstitions; or if any seemed either in point of religion or morality to be better than others, such persons were by the favour of episcopacy termed Puritans. These are they whose principles you say are so opposite to kingship. Nor are they the only persons, "most of the reformed religion, that have not sucked in the rest of their prinriples, yet seem to have approved of those that strike at kingly government." So that while you inveigh bitterly against the Independents, and endeavour to separate them from Christ's flock, with the same breath you praise them; and those principles which almost every where you affirm to be peculiar to the Independents, here you confess have been approved of by most of the reformed religion. Nay, you are arrived to that egree of impudence, impiety, and apostacy, that though formerly you maintained bishops ought to be extirpated out of the church root and branch, as so tany pests and limbs of antichrist, here you say the king ought to protect them, for the saving of his coronation oath. You cannot shew yourself a more in"there were added to those judges, that were famous villain than you have done already, but by ab-made choice of out of the house of commons, some offi You seem to begin this eleventh chapter, Salmasius, though with no modesty, yet with some sense of your weakness and trifling in this discourse. For whereas you proposed to yourself to inquire in this place, by what authority sentence was given against the king; you add immediately, which nobody expected from you, that "it is in vain to make any such inquiry; to wit, because the quality of the persons that did it leaves hardly any room for such a question." And therefore as you have been found guilty of a great deal of impudence and sauciness in the undertaking of this cause, so since you seem here conscious of your own impertinence, I shall give you the shorter answer. To your question then; by what authority the house of commons either condemned the king themselves, or delegated that power to others; I answer, they did it by virtue of the supreme authority on earth. How they come to have the supreme power, you may learn by what I have said already, when I have refuted your impertinencies upon that subject. If you believed yourself, that you could ever say enough upon any subject, you would not be so tedious in repeating the same thing so juring the protestant reformed religion, to which you are a scandal. Whereas you tax us with giving a ❝toleration of all sects and heresies," you ought not to ind fault with us for that; since the church bears with sach a profligate wretch as you yourself, such a vain fellow, such a liar, such a mercenary slanderer, such an apostate, one who has the impudence to affirm, that the best and most pious of Christians, and even most of those who profess the reformed religion, are crept out of hell, because they differ in opinion from you. I bad best pass by the calumnies that fill up the rest of this chapter, and those prodigious tenets that you ascribe to the Independents, to render them odious; for either do they at all concern the cause you have in band, and they are such for the most part as deserve many times over. And the house of commons might cers of the army, and it never was known, that soldiers was An cause. no relation to the matter in hand. So that my being more brief in this chapter than in the rest is not to be imputed to want of diligence in me, which, how irksome soever you are to me, I have not slackened, but to your tedious impertinence, so void of matter and sense. CHAP. XII. your cause to the last, to wit, that of ripping up and inquiring into the king's crimes; which when I shall have proved them to have been true and most exorbi tant, they will render his memory unpleasant and mons, that tried and condemned the king," I give you this answer the number of them, who gave their votes for putting the king to death, was far greater than is necessary, according to the custom of our parliaments, to transact the greatest affairs of the kingdom, in the absence of the rest; who since they were absent through their own fault, (for to revolt to the common enemy in their hearts, is the worst sort of absence,) their absence ought not to hinder the rest who continued faithful to the cause, from preserving the state; which when it was in a tottering condition, and almost quite reduced to slavery and utter ruin, the whole body of the people had at first committed to their fidelity, pru- I WISH, Salmasius, that you had left out this part of dence, and courage. And they acted their parts your discourse concerning the king's crime, which it like men; they set themselves in opposition to the un- had been more advisable for yourself and your party ruly wilfulness, the rage, the secret designs of an in- to have done; for I am afraid lest in giving you an veterate and exasperated king; they preferred the answer to it, I should appear too sharp and severe upon common liberty and safety before their own; they out- him, now he is dead, and hath received his punishdid all former parliaments, they outdid all their ances- ment. But since you choose rather to discourse contors, in conduct, magnanimity, and steadiness to their fidently and at large upon that subject, I will make Yet these very men did a great part of the you sensible, that you could not have done a more inpeople ungratefully desert in the midst of their under-considerate thing, than to reserve the worst part of taking, though they had promised them all fidelity, all the help and assistance they could afford them. These were for slavery and peace, with sloth and luxury, upon any terms: others demanded their liberty, nor would accept of a peace, that was not sure and honour-odious to all good meu, and imprint now in the close able. What should the parliament do in this case? Ought they to have defended this part of the people, that was sound, and continued faithful to them and their country, or to have sided with those that deserted both? I know what you will say they ought to have done. You are not Eurylochus, but Elpenor, a miserable enchanted beast, a filthy swine, accustomed to a sordid slavery even under a woman; so that you have not the least relish of true magnanimity, nor consequently ofury and excess worth relating? And what would those liberty, which is the effect of it: you would have all other men slaves, because you find in yourself no generous, ingenuous inclinations; you say nothing, you breathe nothing, but what is mean and servile. You raise another scruple, to wit, "that he was the king of Scotland too, whom we condemned;" as if he might therefore do what he would in England. But that you may conclude this chapter, which of all others is the most weak and insipid, at least with some witty quirk, "there are two little words," say you, "that are made up of the same number of letters, and differ only in the placing of them, but whose significations are wide asunder, to wit, Vis and Jus, (might and right)." It is no great wonder, that such a three-let-pass over to those crimes, "that he is charged with cu tered man as you, (fur, a thief,) should make such a witticism upon three letters: it is the greater wonder (which yet you assert throughout your book) that two things so directly opposite to one another as those two are, should yet meet and become one and the same thing in kings. For what violence was ever acted by kings, which you do not affirm to be their right? These are all the passages, that I could pick out of nine long pages, that I thought deserved an answer. The rest consists either of repetitions of things that have been answered more than once, or such as have of the controversy a just hatred of you, who undertake his defence, on the reader's minds. Say you, “his accusation may be divided into two parts, one is conversant about bis morals, the other taxeth him with such faults as he might commit in his public capacity." I will be content to pass by in silence that part of his life that he spent in banquetting, at plays, and in the conversation of women; for what can there be in lux the things have been to us, if he had been a private person? But since he would be a king, as he could not live a private life, so neither could his vices be like those of a private person. For in the first place, h. did a great deal of mischief by his example: second place, all that time that he spent upon bis lust, and his sports, which was a great part of his time, he stole from the state, the government of which he had undertaken: thirdly and lastly, he squandered away vast sums of money, which were not his own, but the public revenue of the nation, in his domestic luxury and extravagance. So that in his private life at home he first began to be an ill king. But let us rather the account of misgovernment." Here you lament his being condemned as a tyrant, a traitor, and a murderer. That he had no wrong done him, shall now be made appear. But first let us define a tyrant, not a cording to vulgar conceits, but the judgment of Aristotle, and of all learned men. He is a tyrant who gards his own welfare and profit only, and not that of the people. So Aristotle defines one in the ten book of his Ethics, and elsewhere, and so do very mar others. Whether Charles regarded his own or the people's good, these few things of many, that I she' but touch upon, will evince. When his rents and other public revenues of the crown would not defray the expenses of the court, he laid most heavy taxes upon the people; and when they were squandered away, be invented new ones; not for the benefit, honour, or defence of the state, but that he might hoard up, or lavish out in one house, the riches and wealth, not of one, but of three nations. When at this rate he broke lose, and acted without any colour of law to warrant his proceedings, knowing that the parliament was the only thing that could give him check, he endeavoured either wholly to lay aside the very calling of parliaments, or calling them just as often, and no oftener, than to serve his own turn, to make them entirely at his devotion. Which bridle when he had cast off himself, he put another bridle upon the people; he put garrisons of German horse and Irish foot in many towns and cities, and that in time of peace. Do you think he does not begin to look like a tyrant? In which very thing, as in many other particulars, which you have formerly given me occasion to instance, though you scorn to have Charles compared with so cruel a tyrant as Nero, he resembled him extremely much. For Nero likewise often threatened to take away the senate. Besides, he bore extreme hard upon the consciences of good men, and compelled them to the use of ceremonies and superstitious worship, borrowed from popery, and by him reintroduced into the church. They that would not conform, were imprisoned or banished. He made war upon the Scots twice for no other cause than that. By all these actions he has surely deserved the name of a tyrant once over at least. Now I will tell you why the word traitor was put into his indictment: when he assured his parliament by promises, by proclamations, by imprecations, that he had no design against the state, at that very time did he list Papists in Ireland, he sent a private embassy to the king of Denmark to beg assistance from him of armis, horses, and men, expressly against the parliament; and was endeavouring to raise an army first in England, and then in Scotland. To the English he promised the plunder of the city of London; to the Scots, that the four northern counties should be added to Scotland, if they would but help him to get rid of the parliament, by what means soever. These projects net succeeding, he sent over one Dillon, a traitor, into Ireland with private instructions to the natives, to fall suddenly upon all the English that inhabited there.These are the most remarkable instances of his treasons, not taken up upon hearsay and idle reports, but discovered by letters under his own hand and seal. And finally I suppose no man will deny that he was a murderer, by whose order the Irish took arms, and put to death with most exquisite torments above a hundred thousand English, who lived peaceably by them, and without any apprehension of danger; and who raised $ great a civil war in the other two kingdoms. Add to all this, that at the treaty in the Isle of Wight the king openly took upon himself the guilt of the war, and cleared the parliament in the confession he made there, which is publicly known. Thus you have in short why King Charles was adjudged a tyrant, a traitor, and a murderer. But," say you," why was he not declared so before, neither in that solemn league and covenant, nor afterwards when he was delivered to them, either by the Presbyterians or the Independents, but on the other hand was received as a king ought to be, with all reverence?" This very thing is sufficient to persuade any rational man, that the parliament entered not into any councils of quite deposing the king, but as their last refuge, after they had suffered and undergone all that possibly they could, and had attempted all other ways and means. You alone endeavour maliciously to lay that to their charge, which to all good men cannot but evidence their great patience, moderation, and perhaps a too long forbearing with the king's pride and arrogance. But "in the month of August, before the king suffered, the house of commons, which then bore the only sway, and was governed by the Independents, wrote letters to the Scots, in which they acquainted them, that they never intended to alter the form of government that had obtained so long in England under king, lords, and commons." You may see from hence, how little reason there is to ascribe the deposing of the king to the principles of the Independents. They, that never used to dissemble and conceal their tenets, even then, when they had the sole management of affairs, profess, "That they never intended to alter the government." But if afterwards a thing came into their minds, which at first they intended not, why might they not take such a course, though before not intended, as appeared most advisable, and most for the nation's interest? Especially when they found, that the king could not possibly be intreated or induced to assent to those just demands, that they had made from time to time, and which were always the same from first to last. He persisted in those perverse sentiments with respect to religion and his own right, which he had all along espoused, and which were so destructive to us; not in the least altered from the man that he was, when in peace and war he did us all so much mischief. If he assented to any thing, he gave no obscure hints, that he did it against his will, and that whenever he should come into power again, he would look upon such his assent as null and void. The same thing his son declared by writing under his hand, when in those days he run away with part of the fleet, and so did the king himself by letters to some of his own party in London. In the mean time, against the avowed sense of the parliament, he struck up a private peace with the Irish, the most barbarous enemies imaginable to England, upon base dishonourable terms; but whenever be invited the English to treaties of peace, at those very times, with all the power he had, and interest he could make, he was preparing for war. In this case, what should they do, who were entrusted with the care of the government? Ought they to have betrayed the safety of us all to our most bitter adversary? Or would you have had them left us to undergo the calamities of another seven years' war, not to say worse? God put a better mind into them, of preferring, pursuant to that very solemn league and covenant, their religion and liberties, before those thoughts they once had, of not rejecting the king; for they had not gone so far as to vote it; all which they saw at last, (though indeed later than they might have done,) could not possibly subsist, as long as the king continued king. The parliament ought and must of necessity be entirely free, and at liberty to provide for the good of the nation, as occasion requires; nor ought they so to be wedded to their first sentiments, as to scruple the altering their minds, for their own, or the nation's good, if God put an opportunity into their hands of procuring it. But "the Scots were of another opinion; for they, in a letter to Charles, the king's son, call his father a most sacred prince, and the putting him to death a most execrable villany." Do not you talk of the Scots, whom you know not; we know them well enough, and know the time when they called that same king a most execrable person, a murderer, and a traitor; and the putting a tyrant to death a most sacred action. Then you pick holes in the king's charge, as not being properly penned; and you ask "why we needed to call him a traitor and a murderer, after we had styled him a tyrant; since the word tyrant includes all the crimes that may be;" and then you explain to us grammatically and critically, what a tyrant is. Away with those trifles, you pedagogue, which that one definition of Aristotle's, that has lately been cited, will utterly confound; and teach such a doctor as you, that the word tyrant (for all your concern is barely to have some understanding of words) may be applied to one, who is neither a traitor nor a murderer. But "the laws of England do not make it treason in the king, to stir up sedition against himself or the people." Nor do they say, that the parliament can be guilty of treason by deposing a bad king, nor that any parliament ever was so, though they have often done it; but our laws plainly and clearly declare, that a king may vio- | late, diminish, nay, and wholly lose his royalty. For that expression in the law of St. Edward, of "losing the name of a king," signifies neither more nor less, than being deprived of the kingly office and dignity; which befel Chilperic king of France, whose example for illustration sake is taken notice of in the law itself. There is not a lawyer amongst us, that can deny, but that the highest treason may be committed against the kingdom as well as against the king. I appeal to Glanville himself, whom you cite, "If any man attempt to put the king to death, or raise sedition in the realm, it is high treason." So that attempt of some papists to blow up the parliament-house, and the lords and commons there with gunpowder, was by King James himself, and both houses of parliament, declared to be high treason, not against the king only, but against the parliament and the whole kingdom. It would be to no purpose to quote more of our statutes, to prove so clear a truth; which yet I could easily do. For the thing itself is ridiculous, and absurd to imagine, that high treason may be committed against the king, and not against the people, for whose good, nay, and by whose leave, as I may say, the king is what he is so that you babble over so many statutes of ours to no purpose; you toil and wallow in our ancient law-books to no purpose; for the laws themselves stand or fall by authority of parliament, who always had power to confirm or repeal them; and the parliament is the sole judge of what is rebellion, what high treason, (læsa majestas,) and what not. Majesty never was vested to that degree in the person of the king, as not to be more conspicuous and more august in parlia ment, as I have often shewn: but who can endure to hear such a senseless fellow, such a French mountebank, as you, declare what our laws are? And, you English fugitives! so many bishops, doctors, lawyers, who pretend that all learning and ingenuous literature is fled out of England with yourselves, was there not one of you that could defend the king's cause and your own, and that in good Latin also, to be submitted to the judgment of other nations, but that this brainsick, beggarly Frenchman must be hired to undertake the defence of a poor indigent king, surrounded with so many infant-priests and doctors? This very thing, I assure you, will be a great imputation to you amongst foreigners; and you will be thought deservedly to have lost that cause, you were so far from being able to defend by force of arms, as that you cannot so much as write in behalf of it. But now I come to you again, good man Goosecap, who scribble so finely; if at least you are come to yourself again: for I find you here towards the latter end of your book in a deep sleep, and dreaming of some voluntary death or other, that is nothing to the purpose. Then you "deny, that it is possible for a king in his right wits to embroil his people in seditions, to betray his own forces to be slaughtered by enemies, and raise factions against himself." All which things having been done by many kings, and particularly by Charles the late king of England, you will no longer doubt, I hope, especially being addicted to Stoicism, but that all tyrants, as well as profligate villains, are downright mad. Hear what Horace says, "Whoever through a senseless stupidity, or any other cause whatsoever, hath his understanding so blinded, as not to discern truth, the Stoics account of him as of a madman: and such are whole nations, such are kings and princes, such are all mankind; except those very few that are wise." So that if you would clear King Charles from the imputation of acting like a madman, you must first vindicate his integrity, and shew that he never acted like an ill man. "But a king," you say, cannot commit treason against his own subjects and vassals." In the first place, since we are as free as any people under heaven, we will not be imposed upon by any barbarous custom of any other nation whatso ever. In the second place, suppose we had been the king's vassals; that relation would not have obliged us to endure a tyrant to reign and lord it over us. All subjection to magistrates, as our own laws declare, is circumscribed, and confined within the bounds of bo nesty, and the public good. Read Leg. Hen. I. Cap. 55. The obligation betwixt a lord and his tenants is mutual, and remains so long as the lord protects his te nant; (this is all our lawyers tell us;) but if the lord be too severe and cruel to his tenant, and do him some heinous injury, "The whole relation betwixt them, and whatever obligation the tenant is under by having done homage to his lord, is utterly dissolved and extinguished." These are the very words of Bracton and Fleta. So that in some case, the law itself warrants even a slave, or a vassal, to oppose his lord, and allows the slave to kill him, if he vanquish him in battle. If you justify him) "lays no other obligation upon kings, than the laws themselves do: and kings pretend, that they will be bound and limited by laws, though indeed they are altogether from under the power of the laws." Is it not prodigious, that a man should dare to express himself so sacrilegiously and so senselessly, as to assert, that an oath sacredly sworn upon the Holy Evangelists, may be dispensed with, and set aside as a little insignificant thing, without any cause whatsoever! Charles himself refutes you, you prodigy of impiety, who, thinking that oath no light matter, choose rather by a subterfuge to avoid the force of it, or by a fallacy to elude it, than openly to violate it; and would rather falsify and corrupt the oath, than manifestly forswear himself after he had taken it. But "The king indeed swears to his people, as the people do to him; but the people swear fidelity to the king, not the king to them." Pretty invention! Does not he that promises, and binds himself by an oath to do any thing to or for another, oblige his fidelity to them that require the oath of him? Of a truth, every king swears Fidelity, and Service, and Obedience to the people, with respect to the performance of whatsoever he promises upon oath to do. Then you run back to William the Conqueror, who was forced more than once to swear to perform, not what he himself would, but what the people and the great men of the realm required of him. If many kings" are crowned without the usual solemnity," and reign without taking any oath, the same thing may be said of the people; a great many of whom never took the oath of allegiance. If the king by not taking an oath be at liberty, the people are so too. And that part of the people that has sworn, swore not to the king only, but to the realm, and the laws, by which the king came to his crown; and no otherwise to the king, than whilst he should act according to those laws, that "the common People," that is, the house of Commons, should choose; (quas vulgus elegerit.) For it were folly to alter the phrase of our law, and turn it into more genuine Latin. This clause, (quas vulgus elegerit,) which the commons shall choose, Charles before he was crowned, procured to be razed out. "But," say you," without the king's assent the people can choose no laws;" and for this you cite two statutes, viz. Anno 37 H. VI, Cap. 15, and 13 Edw. IV, Cap. 8: but these two statutes are so far from appearing in our statute-books, that in the years you mention neither of those kings enacted any laws at all. Go now and complain, that those fugitives, who pretended to furnish you with matter out of our statutes, imposed upon you in it; and let other people in the mean time stand astonished at your impudence and vanity, who are not ashamed to pretend to be thoroughly versed in such books, as it is so evident you have never looked a city or a whole nation may not lawfully take this per And that clause in the coronation oath, which such a brazen-faced brawler as you call fictitious, "The king's friends," you say yourself," acknowledge, that it may possibly be extant in some ancient copies, but that it grew into disuse, because it had no convenient signification." But for that very reason did our ancestors insert it in the oath, |