CHAPTER XVII.

THE TYRANT.

A TYRANT is one whose list is his law, making his subjects his slaves. Yet this is but a tottering kingdom which is founded on trembling people, who fear and hate their sovereign. He is twofold:

1. In titulo, [in title,] properly an usurper.

2. In exercitio, [in practice,] whom we only describe.

MAXIM I.

He gets all places of advantage into his own hands.-Yea, he would disarm his subjects of all scythes and pruning-hooks, but for fear of a general rebellion of weeds and thistles in the land.

II.

He takes the laws at the first, rather by undermining than assault.—And therefore, to do unjustly with the more justice, he counterfeits a legality in all his proceedings, and will not butcher a man without a statute for it.

111.

Afterwards, he rageth freely in innocent blood.-Is any man virtuous? Then he is a traitor, and let him die for it, who durst presume to be good when his prince is bad. Is he beloved? He is a rebel, hath proclaimed himself king, and reigns already in people's affections; it must cost him his life. Is he of kin to the crown, though so far off that his alliance is scarce to be derived? All the veins of his body must be drained and emptied, to find there, and fetch thence, that dangerous drop of royal blood. And thus, having taken the prime men away, the rest are easily subdued. In all these particulars, Machiavil is his only counsellor; who, in his "Prince," seems to him to resolve all these cases of conscience to be very lawful.

IV.

Worst men are his greatest favourites. He keeps a constant kennel of blood-hounds, to accuse whom he pleaseth. These will depose more than any can suppose, not sticking to swear that they heard fishes speak, and saw through a mill-stone at midnight. These fear not to forswear, but fear they shall not forswear enough-to cleave the pin and do the deed. The less credit they have, the more they are believed, and their very accusation is held a proof.

V.

He leaves nothing that his poor subjects can call their own, but their miseries.—And, as in the West-Indies, thousands of kine are killed for their tallow alone, and their flesh cast away; so, many men are murdered merely for their wealth, that other men may make mummy of the fat of their estates.

v1.

He counts men in misery the most melodious instruments.— Especially if they be well-tuned and played upon by cunning musicians, who are artificial in tormenting them, the more the merrier; and if he hath a set and full consort [concert] of such tortured miserable souls, he danceth most cheerfully at the pleasant ditty of their dying groans. He loves not to be prodigal of men's lives, but thriftily improves the objects of his cruelty,— spending them by degrees, and epicurizing on their pain; so that, as Philoxenus wished a crane's throat, he could desire asses' ears, the longer to entertain their hideous and miserable roaring. Thus nature had not racks enough for men, (the colic, gout, stone, &c.,) but art must add to them, and devils in flesh antedate hell here in inventing torments; which, when inflicted on malefactors, extort pity from merciful beholders, and make them give what is not due; but, when used by tyrants on innocent people, such tender hearts as stand by suffer what they see, and, by the proxy of sympathy, feel what they behold.

VII.

He seeks to suppress all memorials and writings of his actions.And as wicked Tereus, after he had ravished Philomela, cut out her tongue; so when tyrants have wronged and abused the

times they live in, they endeavour to make them speechless, to tell no tales to posterity. Herein their folly is more to be admired than their malice, for learning can never be drained dry: though it may be dammed up for one age, yet it will break over; and historians' pens, being long kept fasting, will afterwards feed more greedily on the memories of tyrants, and describe them to the full. Yea, I believe, their ink hath made some tyrants blacker than they were in their true complexion.

VIII.

At last he is haunted with the terrors of his own conscience.— If any two do but whisper together, (whatsoever the propositions be,) he conceives their discourse concludes against him. Company and solitariness are equally dreadful unto him, being never safe; and he wants a guard to guard him from his guard, and so proceeds in infinitum. The scouts of Charles duke of Burgundy brought him news, that the French army was hard by,-being nothing else but a field full of high thistles, whose tops they mistook for so many spears.* On lesser ground, this tyrant conceives greater fears. Thus in vain doth he seek to fence himself from without, whose foe is within him.

IX.

He is glad to patch up a bad night's sleep, out of pieces of slumber. They seldom sleep soundly, who have blood for their bolster. His fancy presents him with strange masks, wherein only fiends and furies are actors. The fright awakes him; and he is no sooner glad that it was a dream, but fears it is prophetical.

X.

In vain he courts the friendship of foreign princes.-They defy his amity, and will not join their clean hands with his bloody ones. Sometimes, to ingratiate himself, he doth some good acts; but virtue becomes him worse than vice, for all know he counterfeits it for his own ends.

• COMINEUS, Comment., lib. i., juxta finem.

XI.

Having lived in other men's blood, he dies commonly in his own. -He had his will all his life, but seldom makes his testament at his death, being suddenly taken away either by private hand, or public insurrection. It is observed of the camel, that it lies quietly down till it hath its full load, and then riseth up. But this vulgus ["the populace"] is a kind of beast, which riseth up soonest when it is overladen; immoderate cruelty causing it to rebel. Fero is a fitter motto than Ferio for Christians, in their carriage towards lawful authority, though unlawfully used.

We will give a double example of a tyrant: the one, an absolute sovereign; the other, a substitute or viceroy under an absolute prince.

• Fero, "to endure;" and ferio, "to strike," or "to resist." The meaning is, "Patience is a fitter motto than Resistance for Christians."-EDIT.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE LIFE OF ANDRONICUS.

OR, THE UNFORTUNATE POLITICIAN.

In the first edition of "the Holy and the Profane State," published in 1642, the article ANDRONICUS, written with much care and elegance, was comprised within six pages, filling up only a tenth part of the space which it now occupies. According to the announcement in the notes, the narrative professed to be borrowed chiefly from Nicetas. After Fuller's famous defence of Basinghouse, and his clerical attendance on that branch of the royal army which proceeded into Cornwall under the command of lord Hopton, he received from king Charles I. the appointment of chaplain to the infant princess Henrietta Maria, and attended in that capacity during her Majesty's mournful sojourn in Exeter; and when that city surrendered, his services were of great importance in procuring favourable terms for the garrison and the inhabitants. During these four years of active service in the war, he had ample opportunities of becoming acquainted, through friends and foes, with the views of both the belligerent parties; and knew many clever men whose culpable cupidity was then excited, and who did not attempt to dissemble their eagerness to derive personal profit and aggrandizement from our national convulsions. He was induced, therefore, to enlarge this article, and, with all the appendages of a true historical narrative, to form it into a kind of "Menippean Satire" on the ambition, avarice, cruelty, and other destructive vices, which had then sufficiently developed themselves in the leading characters of the republican movement. He accordingly published it in a pocket size, (foolscap 8vo. pp. 176,) in the style in which it is now presented to the reader, divided into six books, (in our edition called " 'sections,") with a preface, which is here subjoined, and a copious index (eight pages) of the principal subjects narrated in the small volume. As it obtained a great circulation and much approbation, he inserted it entire (with the exception of the preface and index) in every subsequent impression of "the Profane State;" and it has been regarded by moderate men of every party as a salutary and seasonable warning to all those who were engaged in ambitious, unpatriotic projects, during that distressing season of domestic warfare. In reference to many curious events which subsequently occurred, Fuller's broad intimations proved to be eminently prophetic; but in none of his anticipatory delineations was he afterwards accounted to have been more felicitous, than in the speech of Andronicus, on the eve of his being elected to be joint-emperor with the youthful Alexius Comnenus, which the reader will find in page 412, and which might have been purposely indited as a pattern for that of Cromwell, when he reluctantly declined the faintly-proffered sovereignty of these realms, and with much apparent coyness accepted the Protectorate. Other then-uncontemplated co-incidences will be obvious to every one who is acquainted with the historical records of those times of civil discord.-EDIT.