Chapter VI: Part 6

It is true, as my author has observed in the beginning of his history, that before the Catholic League, or Holy Union, which is the subject of this book, there was a league or combination of Huguenots, against the government of France, which produced the conspiracy of Amboise; and the Calvinist preachers (as Mezeray, a most impartial historian, informs us) gave their opinion, that they might take up arms in their own defence, and make way for a free access to the king, to present their remonstrances. But it was ordered at the same time, that they should seize on the Duke of Guise, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, his brother, who were then chief ministers, that they might be brought to trial by process before the States; but he adds immediately, who could answer for them, that the prisoners should not have been killed out of hand, and that they would not have made themselves masters of the queen-mother’s person, and of the young king’s, which was laid afterwards to their charge? The concealed heads of this conspiracy, were Lewis Prince of Conde, and the famous Admiral de Coligny: who being discontented at court, because their enemies, the Guises, had the management of affairs under the Queen Regent, to their exclusion, and being before turned Calvinists, made use of that rebellious sect, and the pretence of religion, to cover their ambition and revenge. The same Mezeray tells us in one of the next pages, that the name of Huguenots or Fidnos, (from whence it was corrupted,) signifies, League or Association, in the Swiss language; and was brought, together with the sect, from Geneva into France. But from whencesoever they had their name, it is most certain that pestilent race of people cannot, by their principles, be good subjects; for whatever enforced obedience they pay to authority, they believe their class above the king; and how they would order him if they had him in their power, our most gracious sovereign has sufficiently experienced when he was in Scotland.[21] As for their boast that they brought him in, it is much as true as that of the Calvinists, who pretend, as my author tells you in his preface, that they seated his grandfather, Henry IV. upon the throne. For both French and English Presbyterians were fundamentally and practically rebels; and the French have this advantage over ours, that they came in to the aid of Henry III. at his greatest need, or rather were brought over by the king of Navarre, their declared head, on a prospect of great advantage to their religion; whereas ours never inclined to the king’s restoration, till themselves had been trodden underfoot by the independent party, and till the voice of three nations called aloud for him, that is to say, when they had no possibility of keeping him any longer out of England. But the beginning of leagues, unions, and associations, by those who called themselves God’s people, for reformation of religious worship, and for the redress of pretended grievances in the state, is of a higher rise, and is justly to be dated from Luther’s time; and the private spirit, or the gift of interpreting scriptures by private persons without learning, was certainly the original cause of such cabals in the reformed churches; so dangerous an instrument of rebellion is the holy scripture in the hands of ignorant and bigotted men.

The Anabaptists of Germany led up the dance, who had always in their mouths, faith, charity, the fear of God, and mortifications of the flesh: prayers, fastings, meditations, contempt of riches and honours, were their first specious practices. From thence they grew up, by little and little, to a separation from other men, who, according to their pharisaical account, were less holy than themselves; and decency, civility, neatness of attire, good furniture, and order in their houses, were the brands of carnal-minded men. Then they proceeded to nick-name the days of the weeks, and Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, &c. as heathen names, must be rejected for the first, second, and third days, distinguishing only by their numbers. Thus they began to play, as it were, at cross purposes with mankind; and to do every thing by contraries, that they might be esteemed more godly and more illuminated. It had been a wonder, considering their fanciful perfections, if they had stopped here. They were now knowing and pure enough to extend their private reformation to the church and state; for God’s people love always to be dealing as well in temporals as spirituals; or rather, they love to be fingering spirituals, in order to their grasping temporals. Therefore they had the impudence to pretend to inspiration in the exposition of scriptures; a trick which since that time has been familiarly used by every sect in its turn, to advance their interests. Not content with this, they assumed to themselves a more particular intimacy with God’s holy spirit; as if it guided them, even beyond the power of the scriptures, to know more of him than was therein taught. For now the Bible began to be a dead letter of itself; and no virtue was attributed to the reading of it, but all to the inward man, the call of the Holy Ghost, and the engrafting of the word, opening their understanding to hidden mysteries by faith. And here the mountebank way of canting words came first in use; as if there were something more in religion than could be expressed in intelligible terms, or nonsense were the way to heaven. This of necessity must breed divisions amongst them; for every man’s inspiration being particular to himself, must clash with another’s, who set up for the same qualification; the Holy Ghost being infallible in all alike, though he spoke contradictions in several mouths. But they had a way of licking one another whole; mistakes were to be forgiven to weak brethren; the failing was excused for the right intention; he who was more illuminated, would allow some light to be in the less, and degrees were made in contradictory propositions. But godfathers and godmothers, by common consent, were already set aside, together with the observation of festivals, which they said were of antichristian institution. They began at last to preach openly, that they had no other king but Christ, and by consequence earthly magistrates were out of doors. All the gracious promises in scripture they applied to themselves, as God’s chosen, and all the judgments were the portion of their enemies. These impieties were at first unregarded, and afterwards tolerated by their sovereigns; and Luther himself made request to the Duke of Saxony, to deal favourably with them, as honest-meaning men who were misled. But in the end, when, by these specious pretences, they had gathered strength, they who had before concluded, that Christ was the only king on earth, and at the same time assumed to themselves, that Christ was theirs; inferred by good consequence, that they were to maintain their king; and not only so, but to propagate that belief in others; for what God wills, man must obey; and for that reason, they entered into a league of association amongst themselves, to deliver their Israel out of Egypt; to seize Canaan, and to turn the idolaters out of possession. Thus you see by what degrees of saintship they grew up into rebellion, under their successive heads, Muncer, Phifer, John of Leyden, and Knipperdolling, where what violences, impieties, and sacrileges, they committed, those who are not satisfied may read in Sleidan.[22] The general tradition is, that after they had been besieged in Munster, and were forced by assault, their ringleaders being punished, and they dispersed, two ships-lading of these precious saints was disembogued in Scotland, where they set up again, and broached anew their pernicious principles. If this be true, we may easily perceive on what a noble stock presbytery was grafted. From Scotland they had a blessed passage into England; or at least arriving here from other parts, they soon came to a considerable increase. Calvin, to do him right, wrote to King Edward VI. a sharp letter against these people; but our Presbyterians after him, have been content to make use of them in the late civil wars, where they and all the rest of the sectaries were joined in the good old cause of rebellion against his late Majesty; though they could not agree about dividing the spoils, when they had obtained the victory: and it is impossible they ever should, for all claiming to the spirit, no party will suffer another to be uppermost, nor indeed will they tolerate each other; because the scriptures, interpreted by each to their own purpose, is always the best weapon in the strongest hand: observe them all along, and Providence is still the prevailing argument. They who happen to be in power, will ever urge it against those who are undermost; as they who are depressed, will never fail to call it persecution. They are never united but in adversity, for cold gathers together bodies of contrary natures, and warmth divides them.

How Presbytery was transplanted into England, I have formerly related out of good authors.[23] The persecution arising in Queen Mary’s reign, forced many Protestants out of their native country into foreign parts, where Calvinism having already taken root (as at Frankfort, Strasburg, and Geneva,) those exiles grew tainted with that new discipline; and returning in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, spread the contagion of it both amongst the clergy and laity of this nation.

Any man who will look into the tenets of the first sectaries, will find these to be more or less embued with them: Here they were supported underhand by great men for private interests. What trouble they gave that queen and how she curbed them, is notoriously known to all who are conversant in the histories of those times. How King James was plagued with them, is known as well to any man who has read the reverend and sincere Spottiswoode:[24] And how they were baffled by the church of England, in a disputation which he allowed them at Hampton-Court,[25] even to the conversion of Dr Sparks, who was one of the two disputants of their party, and afterwards writ against them; any one who pleases may be satisfied.

The agreement of their principles with the fiercest Jesuits, is as easy to be demonstrated, and has already been done, by several hands: I will only mention some few of them, to show how well prepared they came to that solemn covenant of theirs, which they borrowed first from the Holy League of France, and have lately copied out again in their intended association against his present majesty.

Bellarmine,[26] as the author of this history has told you, was himself a preacher for the League in Paris during the rebellion there, in the reign of King Henry the Fourth. Some of his principles are these following:[27]

“In the kingdoms of men, the power of the king is from the people, because the people make the king.” Observing that he says, “In the kingdoms of men;” there is no doubt but he restrains this principle to the subordination of the pope; for his Holiness, in that rebellion, as you have read, was declared Protector of the League: So that the pope first excommunicates, (which is the outlawry of the church,) and, by virtue of this excommunication, the people are left to their own natural liberty, and may, without farther process from Rome, depose him.

Accordingly, you see it practised, in the same instance: Pope Sixtus first thunderstruck King Henry the Third and the King of Navarre; then the Sorbonne make decrees, that they have successively forfeited the crown; the parliament verifies these decrees, and the pope is petitioned to confirm the sense of the nation, that is, of the rebels.

But I have related this too favourably for Bellarmine; for we hear him, in another place, positively affirming it as matter of faith, “If any Christian prince shall depart from the Catholic religion, and shall withdraw others from it, he immediately forfeits all power and dignity, even before the pope has pronounced sentence on him; and his subjects, in case they have power to do it, may and ought to cast out such an heretic from his sovereignty over Christians.”

Now, consonant to this is Buchanan’s principle, “That the people may confer the government on whom they please;” and the maxim of Knox, “That if princes be tyrants against God and his truth, their subjects are released from their oath of obedience.” And Goodman’s, “That when magistrates cease to do their duties, God gives the sword into the people’s hands: evil princes ought to be deposed by inferior magistrates; and a private man, having an inward call, may kill a tyrant.”[28]

It is the work of a scavenger, to rake together and carry off all these dunghills; they are easy to be found at the doors of all our sects, and all our atheistical commonwealth’s men. And, besides, it is a needless labour; they are so far from disowning such positions, that they glory in them; and wear them like marks of honour, as an Indian does a ring in his nose, or a Soldanian a belt of garbage. In the meantime, I appeal to any impartial man, whether men of such principles can reasonably expect any favour from the government in which they live, and which, viper-like, they would devour.

What I have remarked of them is no more than necessary, to show how aptly their principles are suited to their practices; the history itself has sufficiently discovered to the unbiassed reader, that both the last rebellion, and this present conspiracy, (which is the mystery of iniquity still working in the three nations,) were originally founded on the French League: that was their model, according to which they built their Babel. You have seen how warily the first association in Picardy was worded; nothing was to be attempted but for the king’s service; and an acknowledgment was formally made, that both the right and power of the government was in him: but it was pretended, that, by occasion of the true Protestant rebels, the crown was not any longer in condition, either of maintaining itself, or protecting them; and that therefore, in the name of God, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, they joined together in their own defence, and that of their religion. But all this while, though they would seem to act by the king’s authority, and under him, the combination was kept as secret as possibly they could, and even without the participation of the sovereign; a sure sign, that they intended him no good at the bottom. Nay, they had an evasion ready too against his authority; for it is plain they joined Humieres, the governor of the province, in commission with him, and only named the king for show; but engaged themselves at the same time to his lieutenant, to be obedient to all his commands; levying men and money, without the king’s knowledge, or any law, but what they made amongst themselves. So that, in effect, the rebellion and combination of the Huguenots[29] was only a leading card, and an example to the Papists to rebel on their side. And there was only this difference in the cause, that the Calvinists set up for their reformation, by the superior power of religion, and inherent right of the people, against the king and pope. The Papists pretended the same popular right for their rebellion against the king, and for the same end of reformation, only they faced it with church and pope.

Our sectaries, and long parliament of forty-one, had certainly these French precedents in their eye. They copied their methods of rebellion, at first with great professions of duty and affection to the king; all they did was in order to make him glorious; all that was done against him was pretended to be under his authority, and in his name; and even the war they raised was pretended for the king and parliament. But those proceedings are so notoriously known, and have employed so many pens, that it would be a nauseous work for me to dwell on them. To draw the likeness of the French transactions and ours, were in effect, to transcribe the history I have translated; every page is full of it; every man has seen the parallel of the Holy League and our Covenant; and cannot but observe, that, besides the names of the countries, France and England, and the names of religions, Protestant and Papist, there is scarcely to be found the least difference in the project of the whole, and in the substance of the articles. In the mean time, I cannot but take notice, that our rebels have left this eternal brand upon their memories, that, while all their pretence was for the setting up the Protestant religion, and pulling down of popery, they have borrowed from Papists both the model of their design, and their arguments to defend it; and not from loyal, well-principled Papists, but from the worst, the most bigotted, and most violent, of that religion; from some of the Jesuits, an order founded on purpose to combat Lutheranism and Calvinism. The matter of fact is so palpably true and so notorious, that they cannot have the impudence to deny it. But some of the Jesuits are the shame of the Roman church, as the sectaries are of ours. Their tenets in politics are the same; both of them hate monarchy, and love democracy; both of them are superlatively violent; they are inveterate haters of each other in religion, and yet agree in the principles of government. And if, after so many advices to a painter, I might advise a Dutch-maker of emblems,[30] he should draw a Presbyterian in arms on one side, a Jesuit on the other, and a crowned head betwixt them; for it is perfectly a battle-royal. Each of them is endeavouring the destruction of his adversary; but the monarch is sure to get blows on both sides. But for those sectaries and commonwealth’s men of forty-one, before I leave them, I must crave leave to observe of them, that, generally, they were a sour sort of thinking men, grim, and surly hypocrites; such as could cover their vices with an appearance of great devotion and austerity of manners; neither profaneness nor luxury were encouraged by them, nor practised publicly, which gave them a great opinion of sanctity amongst the multitude; and by that opinion, principally, they did their business. Though their politics were taken from the Catholic League, yet their Christianity much resembled those Anabaptists, who were their original in doctrine; and these, indeed, were formidable instruments of a religious rebellion. But our new conspirators of these seven last years are men of quite another make: I speak not of their non-conformist preachers, who pretend to enthusiasm, and are as morose in their worship as were those first sectaries, but of their leading men, the heads of their faction, and the principal members of it: what greater looseness of life, more atheistical discourse, more open lewdness, was ever seen, than generally was and is to be observed in those men? I am neither making a satire nor a sermon here; but I would remark a little the ridiculousness of their management. The strictness of religion is their pretence; and the men who are to set it up, have theirs to choose. The long-parliament rebels frequented sermons, and observed prayers and fastings with all solemnity; but these new reformers, who ought, in prudence, to have trodden in their steps, because their end was the same, to gull the people by an outside of devotion, never used the means of insinuating themselves into the opinion of the multitude. Swearing, drunkenness, blasphemies, and worse sins than adultery, are the badges of the party: nothing but liberty in their mouths, nothing but licence in their practice.

For which reason, they were never esteemed by the zealots of their faction but as their tools; and had they got uppermost, after the royalists had been crushed, they would have been blown off as too light for their society. For my own part, when I had once observed this fundamental error in their politics, I was no longer afraid of their success. No government was ever ruined by the open scandal of its opposers. This was just a Catiline’s conspiracy, of profligate, debauched, and bankrupt men: The wealthy amongst them were the fools of the party, drawn in by the rest, whose fortunes were desperate; and the wits of the cabal sought only their private advantages. They had either lost their preferments, and consequently were piqued, or were in hope to raise themselves by the general disturbance; upon which account, they never could be true to one another. There was neither honour nor conscience in the foundation of their league, but every man, having an eye to his own particular advancement, was no longer a friend than while his interest was carrying on: So that treachery was at the bottom of their design, first against the monarchy, and, if that failed, against each other; in which, be it spoken to the honour of our nation, the English are not behind any other country. In few words, just as much fidelity might be expected from them in a common cause, as there is amongst a troop of honest murdering and ravishing bandits: while the booty is in prospect, they combine heartily and faithfully; but when a proclamation of pardon comes out, and a good reward into the bargain, for any one who brings in another’s head, the scene is changed, and they are in more danger of being betrayed, every man by his companion, than they were formerly by the joint forces of their enemies. It is true, they are still to be accounted dangerous, because, though they are dispersed at present, and without an head, yet time and lenity may furnish them again with a commander; and all men are satisfied, that the debauched party of them have no principle of godliness to restrain them from violence and murders; nor the pretended saints any principle of charity,—for it is an action of piety in them to destroy their enemies, having first pronounced them enemies of God. What my author says, in general, of the Huguenots, may justly be applied to all our sectaries: They are a malicious and bloody generation; they bespatter honest men with their pens when they are not in power; and when they are uppermost, they hang them up like dogs. To such kind of people all means of reclaiming, but only severity, are useless, while they continue obstinate in their designs against church and government; for though now their claws are pared, they may grow again to be more sharp. They are still lions in their nature, and may profit so much by their own errors in late managements, that they may become more sanctified traitors another time.

In the former part of our history, we see what Henry III. gained from them by his remisness and concessions. Though our last king was not only incomparably more pious than that prince, but also was far from being taxed with any of his vices; yet in this they may be compared, without the least manner of reflection, that extreme indulgence, and too great concessions, were the ruin of them both. And by how much the more a king is subject, by his nature, to this frailty of too much mildness, which is so near resembling the godlike attribute of mercy, by so much is he the more liable to be taxed with tyranny. A strange paradox, but which was sadly verified in the persons of those two princes. For a faction, appearing zealous for the public liberty, counts him a tyrant who yields not up whatever they demand, even his most undoubted and just prerogatives; all that distinguishes a sovereign from a subject; and the yielding up, or taking away, of which is the very subversion of the government.

Every point which a monarch loses or relinquishes, but renders him the weaker to maintain the rest; and, besides, they so construe it, as if what he gave up were the natural right of the people, which he, or his ancestors, had usurped from them; which makes it the more dangerous for him to quit his hold, and is truly the reason why so many mild princes have been branded with the names of tyrants by their encroaching subjects. I have not room to enlarge upon this matter as I would, neither dare I presume to press the argument more closely; but passing by, as I promised, all the remarkable passages in the late king’s reign, which resemble the transactions of the League, I will briefly take notice of some few particulars, wherein our late associators and conspirators have made a third copy of the League; for the original of their first politics was certainly no other than the French. This was first copied by the rebels in forty-one, and since recopied within these late years by some of those who are lately dead, and by too many others yet alive, and still drawing after the same design; in which, for want of time, many a fair blot shall be left unhit; neither do I promise to observe any method of times, or to take things in order as they happened.

As for the persons who managed the two associations, theirs and ours, it is most certain that in them is found the least resemblance: And it is well for us they were not like; for they had men of subtlety and valour to design, and then to carry on their conspiracy: Ours were but bunglers in comparison of them, who, having a faction not made by them, but ready formed and fashioned to their hands, (thanks to their fathers,) yet failed in every one of their projections, and managed their business with much less dexterity, though far more wickedness than the French. They had, indeed, at their head an old conspirator, witty and turbulent, like the Cardinal of Lorraine,[31] and for courage in execution much such another. But the good sense and conduct was clearly wanting on the English side; so that, if we will allow him the contrivance of the plot, or at least of the conspiracy, which is an honour that no man will be willing to take from him, in all other circumstances he more resembled the old decrepit Cardinal of Bourbon, who fed himself with imaginary hopes of power, dreamed of outliving a king and his successor, much more young and vigorous than himself, and of governing the world after their decease. To die in prison, or in banishment, I think, will make no mighty difference; but this is a main one, that the one was the dupe of all his party, the other led after him, and made fools of all his faction. As for a Duke of Guise, or even so much as a Duke of Mayenne, I can find none in their whole cabal. I cannot believe that any man now living could have the vanity to pretend to it. It is not every age than can produce a Duke of Guise,—a man who, without the least shadow of a title, (unless we will believe the memoirs of the crack-brained advocate David, who gave him one from Charlemagne,) durst make himself head of a party, and was not only so in his own conceit, but really; presumed to beard a king, and was upon the point of being declared his lieutenant-general and his successor. None of these instances will hold in the comparison; and therefore I leave it to be boasted, it may be, by one party, but I am sure to be laughed at by another. Many hot-headed Chevaliers d’Aumale, and ambitious bravos, like Captain St Paul,[32] may be found amongst them; intriguing ladies and gallants of the times, such as are described in the army of the League, at the battle of Yvry;[33] and, besides them, many underling knaves, pimps, and fools; but these are not worthy to be drawn into resemblance.

Therefore, to pass by their persons, and consider their design, it is evident, that on both sides they began with a League, and ended with a conspiracy. In this they have copied, even to the word Association, which you may observe was used by Humieres, in the first wary League which was formed in Picardy; and we see to what it tended in the event: For when Henry III., by the assistance of the king of Navarre, had in a manner vanquished his rebels, and was just upon the point of mastering Paris, a Jacobin, set on by the preachers of the League, most barbarously murdered him; and, by the way, take notice, that he pretended enthusiasm, or inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, for the commission of his parricide. I leave my superiors to conclude from thence, the danger of tolerating nonconformists, who, (be it said with reverence,) under pretence of a whisper from the Holy Ghost, think themselves obliged to perpetrate the most enormous crimes against the person of their sovereign, when they have first voted him a tyrant and an enemy to God’s people. This, indeed, was not so impudent a method as what was used in the formal process of a pretended high court of justice, in the murder of King Charles I., and therefore I do not compare those actions; but it is much resembling the intended murder of our gracious king at the Rye, and other places: And, that the head of a college might not be wanting to urge the performance of this horrible attempt, instead of Father Edm. Bourgoing,[34] let Father Ferguson[35] appear, who was not wanting in his spiritual exhortations to our conspirators, and to make them believe, that to assassinate the king was only to take away another Holofernes. It is true, the Jacobin was but one; and there were many joined in our conspiracy, and more perhaps than Rumsey or West[36] have ever named: but this, though it takes from the justness of the comparison, adds incomparably more to the guilt of it, and makes it fouler on our side of the water.

My author makes mention of another conspiracy against Henry IV., for the seizing of his person at Mante, by the young Cardinal of Bourbon, who was head of the third party, called at that time the Politics, that is to say, in modern English, Trimmers. This, too, was a limb of our conspiracy; and the more moderate party of our traitors were engaged in it.[37] But had it taken effect, the least it could have produced, was to have overthrown the succession; and no reasonable man would believe, but they who could forget their duty so much as to have seized the king, might afterwards have been induced to have him made away, especially when so fair a provision was made by the House of Commons, that the Papists were to suffer for it.

But they have not only rummaged the French histories of the League for conspiracies and parricides of kings; I shall make it apparent, that they have studied those execrable times, for precedents of undermining the lawful authority of their sovereigns. Our English are not generally commended for invention; but these were merchants of small wares, very pedlers in policy; they must like our tailors, have all their fashions from the French, and study the French League for every alteration, as our snippers go over once a year into France, to bring back the newest mode, and to learn to cut and shape it.

For example: The first estates convened at Blois by Henry III. (the League being then on foot, and most of the three orders dipped in it,) demanded of that king, that the articles which should be approved by the three orders should pass for inviolable laws, without leaving to the king the power of changing any thing in them. That the same was designed here by the leading men of their faction, is obvious to every one: for they had it commonly in their mouths in ordinary discourse; and it was offered in print by Plato Redivivus,[38] as a good expedient for the nation, in case his Majesty would have consented to it.

Both in the first and last estates at Blois, the bill of exclusion against the King of Navarre was pressed; and in the last carried by all the three orders, though the king would never pass it. The end of that bill was very evident; it was to have introduced the Duke of Guise into the throne, after the king’s decease: to which he had no manner of title, or at least a very cracked one, of which his own party were ashamed. Our bill of exclusion was copied from hence; but thrown out by the House of Peers, before it came to the king’s turn to have wholly quashed it.

After the Duke of Guise had forced the king to fly from Paris by the barricades, the queen-mother being then in the traitor’s interests, when he had outwitted her so far, as to persuade her to join in the banishment of the Duke of Espernon, his enemy, and to make her believe, that if the King of Navarre, whom she hated, were excluded, he would assist her in bringing her beloved grandchild of Lorraine, to the possession of the crown: it was proposed by him for the Parisians, that the lieutenancy of the city might be wholly put into their hands; that the new provost of merchants, and present sheriffs of the faction, might be confirmed by the king; and for the future, they should not only elect their sheriffs, but the colonels and captains of the several wards.

How nearly this was copied in the tumultuous meetings of the city for their sheriffs, both we and they have cause to remember; and Mr Hunt’s book, concerning their rights in the city charter, mingled with infamous aspersions of the government, confirms the notions to have been the same.[39] And I could produce some very probable instances out of another libel, (considering the time at which it was written, which was just before the detection of the conspiracy,) that the author of it, as well as the supervisor, was engaged in it, or at least privy to it; but let villainy and ingratitude be safe and flourish.

By the way, an observation of Philip de Comines comes into my mind: That when the Dukes of Burgundy, who were Lords of Ghent, had the choice of the sheriffs of that city, in that year all was quiet and well governed; but when they were elected by the people, nothing but tumults and seditions followed.[40]

I might carry this resemblance a little farther: for in the heat of the plot, when the Spanish pilgrims were coming over,[41] nay more, were reported to be landed; when the representatives of the Commons were either mortally afraid, or pretended to be so, of this airy invasion, a request was actually made to the king, that he would put the militia into their hands; which how prudently he refused, the example of his father has informed the nation.

To shew how the heads of their party had conned over their lesson of the barricades of Paris, in the midst of Oates his Popish plot, when they had fermented the city with the leven of their sedition, and they were all prepared for a rising against the government; let it be remembered, that as the Duke of Guise and the council of sixteen forged a list of names, which they pretended to be of such as the king had set down for destruction; so a certain earl of blessed memory caused a false report to be spread of his own danger, and some of his accomplices, who were to be murdered by the Papists and the royal party; which was a design to endear themselves to the multitude, as the martyrs of their cause; and at the same time, to cast an odious reflection on the king and ministers, as if they sought their blood with unchristian cruelty, without the ordinary forms of justice. To which may be added, as an appendix, their pretended fear, when they went to the parliament at Oxford; before which some of them made their wills, and shewed them publicly; others sent to search about the places where the two houses were to sit, as if another gunpowder plot was contriving against them, and almost every man of them, according to his quality, went attended with his guard of Janizaries, like Titus:[42] so that what with their followers, and the seditious townsmen of that city, they made the formidable appearance of an army; at least sufficient to have swallowed up the guards, and to have seized the person of the king, in case he had not prevented it by a speedy removal, as soon as he had dissolved that parliament.

I begin already to be tired with drawing after their deformities, as a painter would be, who had nothing before him in his table but lazars, cripples, and hideous faces, which he was obliged to represent: yet I must not omit some few of their most notorious copyings. Take for example their Council of Six, which was an imitation of the League, who set up their famous council, commonly called “Of the Sixteen:” And take notice, that on both sides they picked out the most heady and violent men of the whole party; nay, they considered not so much as their natural parts, but heavy blockheads were thrown in for lumber, to make up the weight. Their zeal for the party, and their ambition, atoned for their want of judgment, especially if they were thought to have any interest in the people. Loud roarers of _aye_ and _no_ in the parliament, without common sense in ordinary discourses, if they were favourites of the multitude, were made privy counsellors of their cabal; and fools, who only wanted a parti-coloured coat, a cap, and a bawble, to pass for such amongst reasonable men, were to redress the imaginary grievances of a nation, by murdering, or at least seizing of the king. Men of scandalous lives, cheats, and murderers, were to reform the nation, and propagate the Protestant religion; and the rich ideots to hazard their estates and expectations, to forsake their ease, honour, and preferments, for an empty name of heading a party; the wittiest man amongst them to encumber and vex his decrepit age, for a silly pique of revenge, and to maintain his character to the last, of never being satisfied with any government, in which he was not more a king than the present master. To give the last stroke to this resemblance, fortune did her part; and the same fate, of division amongst themselves, ruined both those councils which were contriving their king’s destruction. The Duke of Mayenne and his adherents, who were much the most honest of the Leaguers, were not only for a king, but for a king of the royal line, in case that duke could not cause the election to fall on himself, which was impossible, because he was already married. The rest were, some for this man, some for another, and all in a lump for the daughter of Spain; this disunited them, and in the end ruined their conspiracy. In our Council of Six, some were for murdering, and some for securing of the king; some for a rising in the west, and some for an insurrection of the Brisk Boys of Wapping: in short, some were for a mongrel kind of kingship, to the exclusion of the royal line, but the greater part for a bare-faced commonwealth. This raised a division in their council; that division was fomented into a mutual hatred of each other; and the conclusion was, that instead of one conspiracy, the machines played double, and produced two, which were carried on at the same time. A kind of spread eagle plot was hatched, with two heads growing out of the same body: such twin treasons are apt to struggle like Esau and Jacob in the womb, and both endeavouring to be first born, the younger pulls back the elder by the heel.

I promised to observe no order, and am performing my word before I was aware. After the barricades, and at many other times, the Duke of Guise, and Council of Sixteen, amongst the rest of the articles, demanded of the king to cashier his guards of the forty-five gentlemen, as unknown in the times of his predecessors, and unlawful; as also, to remove his surest friends from about his person, and from their places, both military and civil. I leave any man to judge, whether our conspirators did not play the second part to the same tune; whether his majesty’s guards were not alleged to be unlawful, and a grievance to the subjects; and whether frequent votes did not pass in the House of Commons at several times, for removing and turning out of office those, who, on all occasions, behaved themselves most loyally to the king, without so much as giving any other reason of their misdemeanors than public fame; that is to say, reports forged and spread by their own faction, or without allowing them the common justice of vindicating themselves from those calumnies and aspersions.

I omit the many illegal imprisonments of freeborn men, by their own representatives, who, from a jury, erected themselves into judges; because I find nothing resembling it in the worst and most seditious times of France. But let the history be searched, and I believe Bussy Le Clerc never committed more outrages in pillaging of houses, than Waller in pretending to search for Popish relics:[43] Neither do I remember that the French Leaguers ever took the evidence of a Jew, as ours did of Faria.[44] But this I wonder at the less, considering what Christian witnesses have been used, if at least the chief of them was ever christened. Bussy Le Clerc, it is true, turned out a whole parliament together, and brought them prisoners to the Bastile; and Bussy Oates was for garbling too, when he informed against a worthy and loyal member, whom he caused to be expelled the House, and sent prisoner to the Tower:[45] But that which was then accounted a disgrace to him, will make him be remembered with honour to posterity.

I will trouble the reader but with one observation more, and that shall be to show how dully and pedantically they have copied even the false steps of the League in politics, and those very maxims which ruined the heads of it. The Duke of Guise was always ostentatious of his power in the states, where he carried all things in opposition to the king: but, by relying too much on the power he had there, and not using arms when he had them in his hand, I mean by not prosecuting his victory to the uttermost, when he had the king enclosed in the Louvre, he missed his opportunity, and fortune never gave it him again.

The late Earl of Shaftesbury, who was the undoubted head and soul of that party, went upon the same maxims; being (as we may reasonably conclude) fearful of hazarding his fortunes, and observing, that the late rebellion, under the former king, though successful in war, yet ended in the restoration of his present majesty, his aim was to have excluded his royal highness by an act of parliament; and to have forced such concessions from the king, by pressing the chimerical dangers of a popish plot, as would not only have destroyed the succession, but have subverted the monarchy; for he presumed he ventured nothing, if he could have executed his design by form of law, and in a parliamentary way. In the mean time, he made notorious mistakes: first, in imagining that his pretensions would have passed in the House of Peers, and afterwards by the king. When the death of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey had fermented the people; when the city had taken the alarm of a popish plot, and the government of it was in fanatic hands; when a body of White Boys was already appearing in the west,[46] and many other counties waited but the word to rise—then was the time to have pushed his business: but Almighty God, who had otherwise disposed of the event, infatuated his counsels, and made him slip his opportunity; which he himself observed too late, and would have redressed by an insurrection, which was to have begun at Wapping, after the king had been murdered at the Rye.

And now, it will be but justice, before I conclude, to say a word or two of my author.[47] He was formerly a Jesuit. He has, amongst others of his works, written the history of Arianism, of Lutheranism, of Calvinism, the Holy War, and the Fall of the Western Empire. In all his writings, he has supported the temporal power of sovereigns, and especially of his master the French king, against the usurpations and encroachments of the papacy. For which reason, being in disgrace at Rome, he was in a manner forced to quit his order, and, from Father Maimbourg, is now become Monsieur Maimbourg. The great king, his patron, has provided plentifully for him by a large salary, and indeed he has deserved it from him. As for his style, it is rather Ciceronian, copious, florid, and figurative, than succinct: He is esteemed in the French court equal to their best writers, which has procured him the envy of some who set up for critics. Being a professed enemy of the Calvinists, he is particularly hated by them; so that their testimonies against him stand suspected of prejudice. This History of the League is generally allowed to be one of his best pieces.[48] He has quoted everywhere his authors in the margin, to show his impartiality; in which, if I have not followed him, it is because the chiefest of them are unknown to us, as not being hitherto translated into English. His particular commendations of men and families, is all which I think superfluous in his book; but that, too, is pardonable in a man, who, having created himself many enemies, has need of the support of friends. This particular work was written by express order of the French king, and is now translated by our king’s command. I hope the effect of it in this nation will be, to make the well-meaning men of the other party sensible of their past errors, the worst of them ashamed, and prevent posterity from the like unlawful and impious design.

FOOTNOTES:

[10]

Our play’s a parallel: the Holy League
Begot our Covenant; Guisards got the Whig.

Vol. VII. p. 19.

[11] “Our attention, therefore, was to make the play a parallel betwixt the Holy League plotted by the house of Guise and its adherents, with the Covenant plotted by the rebels in the time of Charles I. and those of the New Association, which was the spawn of the Old Covenant.”—Vol. VII. p. 146.

[12] I wish the fervour of Dryden’s loyalty had left this exhortation to such writers as the author of “Justice Triumphant,” an excellent new song, in commendation of Sir George Jefferies, Lord Chief Justice of England. To a pleasant new tune, called, _Now the Tories that glories_.

Loyal Jefferies is judge again. }
Let the Brimighams grudge amain, }
Who to Tyburn must trudge amain. }

[13] “And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of rain.

“So Ahab went up to eat and to drink; and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, and cast himself down upon the earth, and put his head between his knees;

“And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea; and he went up and looked, and said there is nothing; and he said, Go again seven times.

“And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold there comes a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand: And he said, Go, say unto Ahab, prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.

“And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind; and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel.”—1 _Kings_, xviii. 41-46.

[14] Joash king of Israel, having visited the prophet Elisha while on his death-bed, was desired, by the dying seer, to take a bow, and shoot an arrow towards the east, and he shot. “And he said, the arrow of the Lord’s deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria; for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them.

“And he said, Take the arrows, and he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground, and he smote thrice and stayed.

“And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldst have smitten five and six times, then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.”—2 _Kings_, xiii. 14-20.

[15] Our readers need hardly be reminded, that the League was a confederacy formed under pretence of maintaining the Catholic religion, and excluding Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., from the throne, on account of his being a Huguenot. It was only dispersed and subdued after the long and bloody war which was terminated by his ascending the throne in 1594.

[16] Louis XIV.

[17] _i.e._ The association of the Huguenots, under the Prince of Conde, Coligni, and others.

[18] It would not have been decent to remind the Grand Monarque of such arguments, as dragoons, banishment, and the gallies.

[19] Peter Victor Palma Cayet studied at Geneva, and was a domestic in the house of Calvin. He afterwards became a reformed minister and chaplain to Catherine, sister to Henry IV. Being addicted to alchemy, and having written a work in defence of public stews, he was deposed by a synod from his ministerial functions, as a wizard and a libertine. Upon this disgrace, he abjured the reformed doctrine, and was considered by the Catholics as a convert of such importance, that the Pope himself honoured his proselyte with a letter of congratulation. His historical works are, an Account of the War between the Turks and Hungarians, published in 1598; his “Septennary Chronology” comprizing from 1598 to 1604; and his “Novennary Chronology,” giving an account of the nine years war, which broke out in 1589, and was terminated by the peace of Vervins. Cayet died in 1610.

[20] He was assassinated, by Jaques Clement, on the 2d August, 1589, when he had besieged Paris with every prospect of success.

[21] To which kingdom Charles repaired upon the invitation of the Presbyterians, whose clergy, however, treated him with an indecent rigour, which he never forgave to the sect.

[22] See some account of these fanatics, and the ravages which they committed in Munster, in the Notes on “Hind and Panther,” Vol. X. p. 145.

[23] In the preface to “Religio Laici,” Vol. X. p. 25.

[24] John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, who wrote a valuable, and, the times considered, a moderate history of the church of Scotland, with a bias, as was natural, to the interests of episcopacy. It is a valuable record of Scottish history. James’s harassing disputes with the Presbyterian clergymen, of course make a great figure in his annals. Spottiswoode was born in 1565, and died in 1639, just about the breaking out of those troubles which ruined the Scottish episcopal church.

[25] In 1603, when the king heard, at Hampton-Court, the bishops’ dispute against Dr Reynolds, Dr Sparks, Mr Knewstubs, and Mr Chadderton, James, infinitely better skilled in the subtleties of polemical divinity, than in the arts of ruling a great kingdom, threw his influence into the scale of episcopacy with such ingenuity, that even the pious Whitegift, then primate of England, did not hesitate to avow his persuasion, that “the king spoke by the very spirit of God.” It was therefore no wonder, that Dr Thomas Sparks, although so learned as to be called the Pillar of Puritanism, and so zealous a despiser of forms, as to appear in a Turkey merchant’s gown at the conference, instead of canonicals, should be so melted and overcome by the king’s eloquence and argument, as to become, in future, a strict conformist. He died in 1616, after having experienced the favour of James, which indeed was due to a proselyte of his own making. Sparks wrote several tracts in favour of the establishment; as, “A Brotherly persuasion to Unity and Uniformity,” &c.

[26] Robert Bellarmine, one of the most able controversialists whom the church of Rome has produced, and whose very name became a sort of war-cry of polemical divinity. He was born at Monte Pulciano, in 1542, and entered, in 1560, the order of Jesuits, of which he soon became a distinguished ornament. In the year 1599, he was honoured with a cardinal’s hat, but not till he had carried the principle of “Nolo Episcopari” so far, that the pope was obliged to threaten an anathema, should he persist in declining the proffered honour. Bellarmine died 17th September, 1621, leaving behind him sundry huge volumes of polemical divinity.