his encroaching prerogative. And had he also redeemed his overdated minority from a pupilage under bishops, he would much less have mistrusted his parliament; and never would have set so base a character upon them, as to count them no better than the vassals of certain nameless men, whom he charges to be such as "hunt after faction with their hounds, the tumults." And yet the bishops could have told him, that Nimrod, the first that hunted after faction, is reputed by ancient tradition the first that founded monarchy; whence it appears, that to hunt after faction is more properly the king's game; and those hounds, which he calls the vulgar, have been often hallooed to from court, of whom the mongrel sort have been enticed; the rest have not lost their scent, but understood aright, that the parliament had that part to act, which he had failed in; that trust to discharge, which he had broken; that estate and honour to preserve, which was far beyond his, the estate and honour of the commonwealth, which he had embezzled. 193. Yet so far doth self-opinion or false principles delude and transport him, as to think "the concurrence of his reason" to the votes of parliament, not only political, but natural," and as necessary to the begetting," or bringing forth of any one "complete act of public wisdom as the sun's influence is necessary to all nature's productions." So that the parliament, it seems, is but a female, and without his procreative reason, the laws which they can produce are but wind-eggs: wisdom, it seems, to a king is natural, to a parliament not natural, but by conjunction with the king; yet he professes to hold his kingly right by law; and if no law could be made but by the great council of a nation, which we now term a parliament, then certainly it was a parliament that first created kings; and not only made laws before a king was in being, but those laws especially whereby he holds his crown. 194. He ought then to have so thought of a parliament, if he count it not male, as of his mother, which to civil being created both him and the royalty he wore. And if it hath been anciently interpreted the presaging sign of a future tyrant, but to dream of copulation with his mother, what can it be less than actual tyranny to affirm waking, that the parliament, which is his mother, can neither conceive or bring forth " any authoritative act" without his masculine coition? Nay that his reason is as celestial and life-giving to the parliament, as the sun's influence is to the earth: what other notions but these, or such like, could swell up Caligula to think himself a god? 195. But to be rid of these mortifying propositions, he leaves no tyrannical evasion unessayed ; first," that they are not the joint and free desires of both houses, or the major part;" next, "that the choice of many members was carried on by faction." The former of these is already discovered to be an old device put first in practice by Charles V., since the reformation: who, when the Protestants of Germany for their own defence joined themselves in league, in his declarations and remonstrances laid the fault only upon some few, (for it was dangerous to take notice of too many enemies,) and accused them, that under colour of religion they had a purpose to invade his and the church's right; by which policy he deceived many of the German cities, and kept them divided from that league, until they saw themselves brought into a snare. That other cavil against the people's choice puts us in mind rather what the court was wont to do, and how to tamper with elections: neither was there at that time any faction more potent or more likely to do such a business, than they themselves who complain most. 196. But he must chew such morsels as propositions, ere he let them down." So let him; but if the kingdom shall taste nothing but after his chewing, what does he make of the kingdom but a great baby? "The straitness of his conscience will not give him leave to swallow down such camels of sacrilege and injustice as others do." This is the Pharisee up and down, "I am not as other men are." But what camels of injustice he could devour all his three realms were witness, which was the cause that they almost perished for want of parliaments. And he that will be unjust to man, will be sacrilegious to God; and to bereave a Christian conscience of liberty, for no other reason than the narrowness of his own conscience, is the most unjust measure to man, and the worst sacrilege to God. 197. That other, which he calls sacrilege, of taking from the clergy that superfluous wealth, which antiquity as old as Constantine, from the credit of a divine vision, counted " poison in the church," hath ever been most opposed by men, whose righteousness in other matters hath been least observed. He concludes, as his manner is, with high commendation of his own "unbiassed rectitude," and believes nothing to be in them that dissent from him, but faction, innovation, and particular designs. Of these repetitions I find no end, no not in his prayer; which being founded upon deceitful principles, and a fond hope that God will bless him in those errors, which he calls "honest," finds a fit answer of St. James: ask and receive not, because 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. "Ye CHAPTER XII. Upon the Rebellion in Ireland. 198. 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 likehood 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. 199. 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 |