Part 13

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.